Summer of Science: Rock Candy

So far, this experiment, making rock candy, is my daughter's favourite. It took a lot of patience but when it was finished (it took one week) she was rewarded with candy that she (well, we) had made ourselves. Rock candy is beautiful to look at, and you can make it with plain sugar or you can add food colour and flavour extract. I let my little scientist pick, and she chose banana extract (that's a thing, believe it or not, that you can find with other extracts in the baking department) and yellow food dye.

You'll need a clean jar, a medium to large sized saucepan, a straw or chopstick (or other stick-like thing), a pipe cleaner, sugar and water. You will also need another clean jar or drinking glass, because you have to change the sugar water mixture daily for at least the first three days.

What you do is combine three cups of white sugar with one cup of water (you will not be eating three cups of sugar; in the end you pitch quite a lot of it). You stir it constantly over medium high heat until it boils. Take it off the heat and keep stirring until the sugar is nicely dissolved. Then you add your colour and extract, if you're using it, and pour the mixture into a clean jar. Wrap a pipe cleaner around the straw or chopstick or whatever you're using, until it dangles down to nearly the bottom but not quite of the jar. You want to balance the straw on the top of the jar. It should look like this:

I realize that this is not an appealing colour. Moving on.

You will need to put a paper towel over top to keep dust out but still allow water to evaporate.

Right after we did this, I asked Jr. Scientist to draw a picture of what she thought the crystals would look like. She thought they would look quite different than they really looked like, so that was kind of fun to find out.

The next day, or even later on in the day, you will need to scoop the crystals off the top so the water can still escape. Every day for at least the first three days you will need to transfer the mixture to a new container, because you want the crystals to attach to the pipe cleaner, not the sides and bottom of the container. You also need to allow the water to evaporate, as I mentioned, and it's difficult to do that when you've got a sheet of crystals at the top. By the fourth day, we just let it sit in the the jar until it was ready.

One week later, or when you decide it's ready, you should put the candy on a plate to let it dry for at least two hours. Then it's ready to eat. It was surprisingly delicious. I made a small rock candy on a little skewer to see if it would stick as well to a smooth surface (it doesn't) and I ate that. It was like a marshmallow banana in flavour. Not bad. Definitely edible. My kid loved it. I think we'll try orange next time.

This is the finished product in all it's very yellow glory.

Summer of Science: Snow

My daughter had a friend over the other day and we taught him how to geocache. He wasn't particularly impressed but he did mention that one of his favourite things in the world is snow. "Snow is so much fun." I remembered seeing an experiment in an old book that made a sort of snow-type concoction that kids could throw like a snowball. We went home and looked it up. I had all of the ingredients, because there were just two. Chances are, you've got them, too.

To make "snow" you need a cup and a half of baking soda, and you need about a half a cup of hair conditioner. That's it. You put it in a bowl, mix it up, and send the kids outside with it with the instructions to not throw at each other. They were happy to make snowballs and throw it at the wall, and it was super easy to clean up with a hose. It also smelled very, very nice. So there. Snow. In June.

      
See how it falls like snow on the dirt? It actually looks like it's real until you wash it away.

Summer of Science: Lesson One

This year, school ended very early for the summer. In fact, it ended a few weeks early, because there is a strike. Now, our summer plans are never complicated. We have friends over, we go away for a couple of days here and there, there is a week long day camp or some such thing somewhere in the middle, and we go to parks. That's pretty much it. I start off loving summer vacation; I only have one kid, and she is an enjoyable little person full of quirky awesomeness and a lot of energy. But by the end of it, she is ready to head back to school because it's one of her favourite places to be, and I am ready to send her back because she makes it obvious that she is ready to go back by whining and testing my ever-dwindling patience. The fact that we had a few extra weeks tacked on to summer vacation made me pause. We needed something different this year, and she loves to learn, so we came up with Summer of Science. For real, we're going to do some cool stuff.

The first experiment we did was the good old ivory soap in the microwave experiment. It was a quick experiment. We bought a bar of Ivory soap. We cut it in half because I was told it would get very big. We put it on a plate. We microwaved it on high for 90 seconds. I asked my child what she thought would happen to the soap. She thought it would melt. It does not melt. It expands and gets crazy big. After it cools, it's pretty much just fluffy Ivory soap. You can't do a ton with it, but you can make potions with it, break it in to bits, etc. You could also use it as regular soap, because it will still clean. It's just really big. And flaky. You can't really play with it like clay, like I thought we could. At any rate, it's a cool experiment and your microwave will smell really, really squeaky clean.

FYI: It has to be Ivory soap. It is whipped with air, and it expands in a way that is similar to a popcorn kernel. So. If you know of another air whipped soap then maybe you can try that. As far as I know, it needs to be good ol' Ivory soap.

                                             

                                                 Behold: THE MAGIC OF SCIENCE.

Camping and Why You Should Do It

We took our daughter camping for the first time when she was 1 1/2. That's a very easy age to take your children camping, actually, because they are super entertained by rocks and sticks. We didn't take her camping again until this year, age six, for no other reason than, uh, we just kinda didn't. We went other places instead. Places with things like hotels. And amenities.

This year, she asked us if we could make s'mores. Real s'mores. And sleep under the stars. Seeing no reason not to, we pulled out our ridiculous ten person tent, our emergency kit full of supplies, and we hit the road to camp for a couple of nights. It was less spontaneous than that, because my husband and I are not spontaneous people, so we had our meals planned out and I had portioned shampoo and dishsoap in little tiny containers, but we slept in a tent on the ground in a place that didn't have showers and where you have to pee in a stinking hole, so that has to count for something. We were near a rushing river and it was a beautiful, soothing sound that lulled us peacefully to sleep. We were woken, ever so gently, by the sound of a native bird, the raven... AT FOUR THIRTY IN THE CURSE WORD MORNING. Our dear, sweet child popped up in her sleeping bag on the chilly, hard ground and said, "OH! A raven! It's time to get up." (Bonus points, little one, for knowing what bird you heard) Her father and I looked at each other in sleepy horror, and said, "No, it's not. It is NOT time to get up. You've got the wrong bird. You're thinking of roosters. On a farm. Go back to sleep." However, this is the thing you need to know about our child. She is not a sleeper. If she is woken up, that's it. She's done. She's good to go. It doesn't matter if we stayed up well into the dark hours of summer night eating the blandest of candy, the toasted marshmallow. She is up and not going back to sleep because A DANG RAVEN MADE A SOUND AND THEN SHUT UP FOR THE REST OF THE DAY. Guess what else? Campgrounds have rules. Rules like: shut the heck up until 7 am, which is a totally reasonable time to get up, and what time the rest of the birds start chirping, because the rest of the birds don't suck. We laid in the tent and shushed her until 7 am, when she burst out of the tent, singing and dancing and joyful. We were the first campers up and I'm not exaggerating. We repeated the same thing the next morning but we'd gone to bed a little earlier, because we were a little wiser.

Camping with an exhausted six year old is still fun, though, and I think everyone should camp (really camp) when their kids are young, if for no other reason than they need to know how lucky they are to have toilets that flush and to appreciate their bed. When the novelty of s'mores, sleeping on the rock hard ground under the ethereal glow of a surprisingly bright glowstick, eating crap cereal I wouldn't otherwise buy out of tiny boxes, and making friends behind the pit toilets with the other children wore off, our two nights were up and we returned with a child who kissed her bed, the floor and declared her love for the toilet. We came home with memories, appreciated nature in its majestic glory, and taught our child to be grateful for modern conveniences. I don't know why, but I can't wait to do it again soon.

Kindergarten

My daughter is now in kindergarten. Here, kindergarten is full day, meaning she is in school from about 9-3. She loves it. Yesterday, they celebrated their 100th day of school, which is apparently a Big Freakin' Deal, and something I don't remember celebrating in school as a kid but according to pinterest and my facebook newsfeed, it's a new international holiday or whatever. In reality, I think it's Kiddo's 87th day of school, because she's contracted several plague-like illnesses as kindergarteners will.

The teacher asked if some of the parents could stay and help out with some of the classroom activities yesterday, and because my job has flexible hours and I'm a sucker, I agreed to come and aid in the supervision of twenty 5 and 6 year old kids with free range to art supplies. There is nothing that can simultaneously build up and tear down your confidence like little kids. They haven't developed a brain to mouth filter yet, and they are impulsive and strange. I enjoy them.

Now, my daughter and her friends are nose-pickers. When she started school, I told her she needed to stop picking and consuming the contents of her nostrils. It was gross, and other kids might make fun of her. She shrugged and told me that all kids picked, and it wasn't a big deal. She seems to be right. I'm not sure what age it goes from acceptable to unacceptable, but it's not kindergarten age. They're all gross. Yesterday, a little boy came up to me and tugged on my shirt. "Mrs. W, Olivia just ate glue." I turn around and see Olivia with a big grin on her face, sitting in front of a tray of white paste.
Me: "Olivia, really? Glue?"
Olivia: "Glue is good!"
Me: "No. What? Glue is not food. That's just... ew. Don't eat glue."
Another little boy at the table: "I eat glue. It IS good." He dips his finger in the glue and licks.
I stared in horror at them. "You all deserve each other."
The children cackled in glee.

I got to read the children a story. This was fun, and they actually listened to me. We had discussions about the ending of the book. I felt like a rock star. Then, later, one of the little girls stared at me while I helped her with a mask. "Why did you touch your hair?"
I didn't even know I had touched my hair. "I don't know. I guess I had a knot in my hair."
Girl: "Oh. Why are you so much shorter than my mom?"
Me: "Because. This is how tall I'm supposed to be."
Girl: "Oh. What's that red mark on your face?"
Me: "Um, a pimple? It's something people get when they grow up. Teenagers get them, and sometimes when you're as old as a mom, you get them, too."
Girl: "My mom doesn't have red marks on her face."
Me: "Okay, well,  you probably have a better chance of not having red marks on your face when you get big, too. And probably you'll be taller than me, so you've got that going on, too."
Girl: "You're funny. I hope you come back tomorrow."

You see? They tear you up, they tear you down, and they are so funny.

Like a Kid in a Candy Store

Recently, after preschool, I decided to take my daughter to the local candy shop to pick out a treat. Currently, she is obsessed with lollipops. Her favourite kind is butterscotch, which she calls "scotch", and amuses me to no end (she sounds like a tiny "Anchorman"! I like scotch! Scotchy, scotch, scotch!) On this particular day, I suggested she look at other candies, because she might want to try something new. She poured over the Pez dispensers, briefly considered the Nerds ("I'm not old enough to not spill these on the floor!") and seriously debated bubble gum. Then she spotted Pixie Stix.
"What IS that?" She asked, her eyes wide. These weren't the little Pixie Stix, you see. These were the straws that rivaled her own height. The ones you see the mothers give their heavily made up sparkle-spawn on Toddlers and Tiaras before unleashing them on the stage.
"Pixie Stix," I replied. She looked surprised. Her face lit up.
"Really? Pixie Stix? What's in them?"
"Sugar," I told her. "That whole straw is filled with a kind of tangy, sourish sugar. It probably tastes like jello powder. I don't remember."
She looked horrified. "That's not a healthy choice! That whole thing is just sugar?! I thought it would be filled with Pixie dust. That is very disappointing. Why would they call it a Pixie Stick if they didn't even put pixie dust in it? They should call it a sugar stick." Disgusted, she chose her "scotch" dum-dum and we left the baffled candy shop owner to ponder the wonder of a 5 year old that claims to like scotch and eschews giant candies due to their lack of nutritional content.

Show and Tell

My daughter goes to preschool three half days a week. It is one of her favourite places to go. They have recently started Show and Tell at preschool. Two children per day are asked to bring something special from home, preferably something older and near and dear to their little hearts, like a special stuffie or a blanket. They are to give their little classmates three clues, and the children guess what the other children have brought. Because my child belongs to a co-op preschool, I have recently witnessed show and tell first-hand, and it's pretty hilarious. When they are supposed to be guessing a stuffed bear, the kids are guessing things like, "A train set! A chicken! A helmet! A barbeque!" None of it makes sense because they are all four, and therefore, they are all a little bit crazy (and so awesome; they all make me smile). My child is to bring her Show and Tell near the middle of December. This is torturing her. Six or seven times a day she asks me if it's her turn yet. When I tell her she has to wait until the middle of December, she dramatically bows her head. "This is just the worst," she groans.

What she wants to bring for Show and Tell changes often, so I have no idea what she'll be touting come mid-December. What I do know, is that she will not be bringing tonight's idea when it is her turn. Tonight, during snuggle time, she said, "Would it be a bad idea to bring snot for show and tell?"
I shuddered. "Yeah, that's... that's not a good idea at all. Plus, it's supposed to be something really special to you."
"That's true," she agreed. "And the clues would be pretty easy and I don't want anybody to guess."
"What would your clues be?" I asked.
She grinned. "Well, 1. It's yellow. 2. It's in your nose. 3. It comes out when ya sneeze."
"Those are good clues," I admitted.
"Yep." And we dissolved into the kind of hysterical laughter that is contagious, giggling until our sides hurt.

Kids are fantastically weird little people.