This teacher's guide features step-by-step instructions for activities that use easily-obtained and inexpensive materials as well as background information, literature connections, and assessment ideas. The unit allows students the opportunity to focus on observing and describing the properties and attributes of substances. In these activities, young students become laboratory scientists and creative inventors as they make their own paste, toothpaste, cola, and ice cream. In the case of each product, they follow the same sequence of science processes: they study the attributes of the product, test its ingredients, and then mix the ingredients to create their own personal secret formula. The activities give students the repeated opportunities they need to understand and begin to use the concept of cause and effect in their investigations. The activities are designed to foster the following skills: observing, comparing, mixing, measuring, calculating, describing, communicating, cooperating, predicting, recording data, inventing, drawing conclusions, and logical thinking. (JRH)