I am in love with this cooler weather and constant rain, I love being cozy inside, wrapped in a thick sweater while the drops drip down. The kids on the other hand, not so much, they’re getting a little stir crazy, I don’t know what they’re going to do when winter really hits. So, in lieu of anything that required more preparation than I had time for today, we broke out the science set with the good old baking soda and vinegar standby.
I used the three test tubes to hold the primary colored vinegar and gave them a small bowl of baking soda to do with as they willed. Aurora has done this experiment before and took the lead showing Gray how to dump some soda in the icing lid petri dish and then squirt some vinegar in.
Gray discovered that if you mix blue and yellow together you get green. I tried to stand back and let them experiment on their own, only pausing them to interject observations and give them language for what was happening.
Aurora practiced her pouring and measuring skills, transferring the liquid between the flask and the beaker over and over. The beaker has a line marking 1/2 and 1 on it, so I would occasionally ask her if she wanted to fill it up to the halfway mark and she occasionally agreed.
Eventually every container was filled with bubbly brown slush, evidence of their very skillful & scientific afternoon fun. 馃檪
This was such an easy set up and required very little guidance on my part and yet it ended up being a great activity for learning: pouring and dumping skills, measuring skills, actions and reactions, and learning about color mixing. Not to mention the social skills involved when playing with a sibling or a friend, this will definitely be a repeat activity for us!
