SUE: Hmm, yes, that’s not bad.

MIKE: OK, now for number three you need rock salt or copper sulphate.

SUE: Oh, I’m not sure about that!

MIKE: Well, just put down the rock salt then, um, apart from that you only need a jar of water Um, and basically you dissolve lots of salt into the water and watch the crystals form, so it basically teaches the kids about growing crystals.

SUE: I suppose it would be nice to grow something. Hmm, let’s move on and have a look at number four.

MIKE: OK, this one is called “Spinning colour wheel”. It looks like you get some cardboard and draw a circle on it, divide it into six equal segments and colour each one in using different colors, then you thread a piece of string through the middle.

SUE: So we’d need some string as well.

MIKE: Yes, sorry... um... and you spin the wheel around and if you can get it spinning fast enough, hopefully the colours all merge and show up as white.

SUE: Oh I didn’t know that. What’s the principle behind it?

MIKE: Well it’s pretty elementary physics, really. It teaches them about how white light or ordinary light is made up.

SUE: Hmm, well that doesn’t sound too bad. Now there’s only one more left in this book isn’t there? What does that one say?

MIKE: Um, well it’s another one where they’d get to make something.

SUE: Sounds very interesting.

MIKE: You need quite a lot of equipment actually——a hand drill, an old record, a pin or needle, some paper and a bolt.

SUE: Hmm, go on, what do they have to do?

MIKE: Well, they basically make a record player. The main idea is to teach them about recording sound, but hopefully they’d also see that you need motion and an amplifier to make the sound heard.

SUE: OK, well it does sound interesting. Shall we go through all of those again and decide if any of them are going to be suitable?