Stand back! I'm going to try SCIENCE!

• home education

[minor pseudonymising edits during Drupal to hugo migration for all the good that will do now]

The slogan is from an xkcd shirt.

And that was pretty much what happened today. I managed to convince the kids to go play outside. Even 6yo who “hates going outside” (or so she claimed today) decided to go out after her little brother (who had been playing inside with her) decided he was going to go outside. She found her “dinosaur stomach” and started making energon stew for the Autobots. I had a flash of “why the hell not” and started bringing out stuff.

A little bowl of flour. A little bowl of bicarb. The almost empty bottle of vinegar (topped up a touch from the new bottle). A little bowl of rice. A little bowl of sugar. A plastic cup of pomace oil. Three jars with lids for them to mix and shake in. Three measuring cups. All the stuff went on an esky (we don’t have an outdoor setting). After a minor flour spill, the esky got moved to the middle of the garden.

There was no set task to solve, no one else’s experiment to repeat, no concern over dependent or independent variables and no write-ups required at the end (which will probably horrify some people). Just experimentation, observation, re/discovery and loads of fun (and mess, which is why it’s strictly an outside thing). I asked 8yo what was going on with his plastic container and he responded it was hard. I asked him why he thought that was and he answered that the reaction was probably forming carbon dioxide which was pushing everything out.

4yo, who was putting pinches of everything into his, discovered the joys of bicarb and vinegar when his relative lack of control caused him to pour slightly too much vinegar into the sludge he was making.

They didn’t really want to stop making potions but I put an end to it by not refilling the ingredients for the third time, telling them I would try to stock up on some things so they would have stuff to mix and experiment with next time. They were ready for a snack anyway and 6yo wanted to make vege faces. I just cut them a platter (which involved some meat and cheese because our platters almost always do) and let them go nuts.

6yo made a face with a moustache:

8yo made an entire person:

…and 4yo made a sandwich.

4yo had had a 5:30am start (he’d gone to bed at 7pm last night due to being that tired) so after all that he piked out for a nap. I reminded the big kids they had bookwork for pocket money later but in the meantime they could take a break. 6yo settled down to watch some library dvds and 8yo flitted between watching and playing outside. I am enjoying the quiet.

This work by ryivhnn is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License