DISCLAIMER

Please do not breathe in the gas from dry ice! Alex was doing it the other day and I got some really good pictures of this cool effect, but it is NOT something to do. I didn't know this at the time, but suspected it was something that could hurt you and when I looked it up, all my fears were true and more.

Dealing safely with dry ice.

Muffin Tin Monday! "Cloudy with a chance of chocolate"

Getting back to the fun stuff doesn't just extend to school work! That means we are back to the fun stuff in life too! Like Muffin Tin Monday. Today I just used what we have on hand and only loosely followed a theme (which is honestly perfect for our 'Spring' we have had so far. It has been pouring for days), but I look forward to enjoying many more MTM's in our near future.

Pirates Booty 'clouds', water (in best homemade sippy EVER), Roast chicken and cheddar roll up

Peanut butter and chocolate peanut butter (it is NOT Nutella, that stuff is filled with nasties), celery, and a couple of shortbread/chocolate mushrooms.

Back to it!

Cyan's first science experiment in a few weeks. It was called "Sweet Leaves" from Biology for Every Kid by Janice VanCleave.

Cyan wrote up the lab notes and then asked me if she could do 'salty leaves' too. Of course I said "let's try it!" and we put cilantro leaves in salty, sweet, and unflavored water. The next morning we woke up and the salty one (the one in the middle) had developed TONS of bubbles! The other two had a regular amount of bubbles for tap water.

The sweet and salty water produced both sweet AND salty leaves (although the sugar was much more distinct in the flavor and we got to talk about how plants use sugar and not salt and therefore the plant would actually suck the sugar water up into it faster than the salty water, etc) but the bubbles were the talk of the experiment. Now she is looking for why salty water would produce so many more air bubbles at room temperature than the others. Esp the sugar water. I was thinking it was the molecules of salt that did it, but then, wouldn't sugar do something similar? Science questions in the making. ;)

Fun with dry ice

We are finally getting back to school stuff. We have been doing nothing but bookwork for weeks and weeks. Frankly, bookwork is easy. It still teaches them and when pregnant, overdue, or cuddling a newborn babe it makes perfect sense... but I have been really excited about starting to enjoy our school days just a little bit more lately.

We have been taking everyday opportunities for fun experiments and today was a really cool one. We got dry ice in our weekly grocery delivery! The kids have played with it many times before, but today, Alex asked if he could put it in really hot water. The effect was really cool. Gaseous bubbles billowing everywhere making one of my mixing bowls look like a witches brew, and the kids enjoyed it as well:

It was quite the cool effect. I look forward to what they will think of to do with next weeks dry ice!