Messy Science

Tom Donoghue leads the Messy Church team at Loughton Methodist Church in north-east London. He kindly came to help at one our Messy Church Does Science road shows this year and was so inspired that he ran a holiday club in the summer based on the book! Here in his own words is what they got up to:
Our Messy Science Convention was an action-packed week! The children (delegates) met special guest ‘expert scientists’ and biblical characters, who of whom were all here to help us test our hypothesis ‘Does God keep his promises?’
The children’s imaginations were captured from the first morning when we met a zoologist who specialised in elephants. He asked us to help make elephant’s toothpaste! This set the scene for Noah and the flood.
On the second day, the church was filled with colour as we tested our thesis against the rainbow – God’s promise to Noah and us. We diffused skittle sweets and created rainbows and the children inflated balloons with a chemical reaction. We also met Noah and a colour specialist who taught us lots of interesting facts about the rainbow.
On day three, we met an astronaut who was ‘live in outer space’ and we were also visited by Abraham! We laughed a lot on this day. All the children were invited to bring in science jokes and they shared them in front of everyone. We learned a lot about the number of stars and Abraham’s promise from God about the number of descendants he will have. Today’s science experiment was very exciting as the children tested out which fizzy drink bottle would have the biggest reaction to a tube of Mentos being poured into its bottle.
Our final day was all about transformations. We began by each person turning some paper into a prayer and then transforming it into a paper aeroplane! The upfront experiments on this morning were particularly amazing as we used dry ice! It was very exciting as it bubbled up over the bowls. We used three different experiments to journey the children through the promise God had made to Noah and Abraham, fulfilled in Jesus Christ.
Here are some comments received by email from parents:

‘My girls have had a wonderful week at holiday club, thank you!’
‘Thank you so much for this week’s Messy Science workshop, Mason has thoroughly enjoyed himself and hasn’t stopped talking about all he has done.’
‘I just wanted to take this opportunity to say a big thank you to everyone involved in the Messy Science week.  Nathan had a really good time and the hard work and effort put in by you all was much appreciated by us both.’
‘Just a short note to say thank you very much for this week. My children Jacob and Phoebe have loved every day of the camp, coming out with so much to tell me and have been very excited to come each morning too. I’m sure there is an enormous amount of work that goes into organising something like this for that amount of children. Once again, thank you very much!’
‘Thank you so much for a fun week for Jack! He has had a lovely time and has been retelling me lots of stories about Noah’s Ark and the astronaut’s trip to Mars and elephant toothpaste! A wonderful idea to entertain the kids in the holidays.’
‘A big thank you for the club this week. Ellis had such a good time and was excited to go every day. I would love to send her to any other events you have. Please say thank you to all the volunteers too they did an amazing job.’

At the door, parents said that this is the best activity that their children have been to all summer!
Tom DonoghueFamily and Children’s Worker Coordinator of Family & Children’s Work