Make your own toothpaste, anyone? Pierce a balloon without popping it? Talk to your friends with a paper cup and some string? These are just a few of the activities that were offered at the first annual Putnam Valley Elementary School (PVES) Family Science Night, sponsored by the Putnam Valley PTA on April 11, 2008 in the PVES cafeteria.

The room was overflowing with eager young researchers and their parents, who traveled from station to station trying out the various experiments. Putnam Valley parent and PTA volunteer Heidi Gesson organized the evening’s activities with the help of dozens of volunteers of all ages.

Activities included Make Your Own Toothpaste (using baking soda, salt, water, and peppermint extract, all mixed together in a sandwich bag); Telephone Cups (using paper cups and string to create a homemade “telephone”); Hanger with String (using a coat hanger and a length of string to experiment with sound); Balloon Piercing (using wooden skewers to carefully poke holes in one end of a balloon ,and out the other end, without popping it); Eyes Playing Tricks on You (using children’s own drawings to attach to a spinning straw and create a tiny “motion picture”) ; and Penny & Water (in which drops of water are gently placed on a penny to demonstrate the principle of surface tension).