Experiments with Emeraude
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- Emeraude and her original ingredients.
Emeraude woke up from her nap with a plan… She began listing to me the
ingredients we needed for a ‘kind of craft’. As I listened to her explanation of what we were to do, I realized what she wanted and explained to her that this was called an ‘experiment’.
We gathered together the many elements of her plan (I think the list grew as we went along) and then went to the task of mixing them together. It was clear that her self esteem was being nourished through being in charge and giving me instructions as she was the leader for this first experiment.
Just a few of her ingredients:
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rice krispie square
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salt
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sugar
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water
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chocolate chips (2)
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artificial snow
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baking soda
of course the list was longer than this, but you get the idea. We decided we would let this experiment sit to see if anything changed while we did our other experiment, later that evening and then the next day. Emeraude was thrilled to see how the rice krispie square had fallen apart as the marshmallow disolved, the only thing that kept itself intact were the chocolate chips which had remained unchanged even the next day.
Experiment #2 – ERUPTION!
I knew this one would impress her and it is a great experiment for budding scientist as the results are so dramatic and immediate. Baking soda + vinegar (often used in volcano projects by elementary school students). We did a few variations, adding sparkles then food colouring. Emeraude tried reversing the order of the ingredients and we were surprised to see that there was no eruption if we put the vinegar first. Also, we tried adding nothing but stirring up the solution after it had stopped bubbling and this too was successful as it began to erupt again when we stirred it.
Great fun, I recommend both these experiments to everyone with young children.
