As an 8th grade science teacher, when Halloween time crept up in the Fall, I always wished that I had a fun, potions-themed, Halloween-esque science lab for my students. But with all the craziness of jumping into the school year, parent-teacher conferences, half-days, holidays, and general exhaustion, I could never seem to get one together. Finally, one summer I decided to pour my energy into creating my dream lab to have on hand!
This ‘Hocus Pocus’ lab’s theme is wizards and potions, and while it’s perfect near Halloween, use it any time of the year to inject some fun phenomena into your curriculum, to create a multidisciplinary fantasy unit with students’ Language Arts class, or to compliment a science unit on acids and bases or chemical reactions!
I set up this lab as stations to keep it as simple for me as possible. You can buy apothecary-looking bottles and jars at the dollar store. The necessary ‘chemicals’ are simple ingredients that you can purchase at the dollar store or grocery store. A lot of these ‘potions’ you would likely have in your science room anyway.
Don’t miss the FREE download of over 80 wizard name cards below!
Welcome Your Wizards
To get my wizards in the spirit, I welcome them into the mad laboratory with cards featuring their special wizard names and I invite them to take a potions booklet. To create the names, I used this Harry Potter Name Generator, but also check out the wizard names at this Fantasy Name Generator. For example, some of my students’ wizard alter-egos were: Norbert Kneen, Tamsin Purkiss, Chervil Drake, Sigrid Arbutus, and Marietta Switch! The clip art pictures on the cards group the wizards for the lab. The wizards will find all potion recipes in their potions booklet.
You can Make a Copy of my a Google Slides version of the students’ wizard name cards (this includes over 80 wizard names!) by CLICKING HERE!
I cut out the cards and hot glue them to small clothespins that my wizards clip onto their shirts.
And to set the mood, you can grab these battery-operated flameless wax candles on Amazon.
Bubbling Cauldrons
Probably my favorite of the stations are the bubbling cauldrons. In three different cauldrons, the wizards will pour dissolved eyeballs on top of colored witch tears. Then, they will drop in some ground up bone tablets and watch the bubbling magic! The ingredients? Vegetable oil, warm water, food coloring, and Alka-Seltzer tablets!
Tie-Dyed Brains
For this station, the wizards drop toad slime on top of liquified zombie brains. Then, they add drops of magic colored potions and tickle the surface with broomstick bristles to create gorgeous swirls resembling tie-dye! The ingredients? Dish soap, milk, food coloring!
Growing a Ghost
The wizards can grow a ghost using the simple ingredients of warm witch tears, invisibility serum, wart powder, and toad slime! The ingredients? Warm water, yeast, dish soap, and hydrogen peroxide!
Witch Blood
Beware the potent witches’ blood! You’ll brew this by boiling red cabbage the night before. Then, when the wizards add spoonfuls of special ingredients (giant’s sweat, dried spider legs, dragon’s drool, and troll ear wax) to their cauldrons of pure witch blood, they’ll get a wickedly pretty result! The ingredients? Red cabbage juice, ammonia, lemon juice, baking soda, and vinegar!
Frankenworms
Throw the possessed frankenworms into a vat of werewolf saliva and watch them dance the night away. The secret is that they’ve been soaked in a strong solution of snake venom! The ingredients? Gummy worms, baking soda, water, and vinegar!
If you’re interested in checking out the full resource, please click on the button below! The full resource includes detailed teacher notes for gathering and setting up the potions and arranging the stations, a supply list with quantities, and explanations of the science behind each phenomenon. It also includes the station signs, apothecary potion labels, and both an editable version of the potions booklet and an alternative full-page version of the student sheets.
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