Homeschool in the Rough: Science and Snacks

So these happened about a week ago, but I am including it now since it took my until now to get my butt into gear with starting a homeschool blog. I will be including some of the other things we have done up to the point later on.

Firstly, my kiddos love science. While they sometimes complain about math or language arts, not a negative word is said about science. And can you blame them, I mean, science is fun! Princess has been studying solutions lately. For her science experiment she used four different solvents which were soapy water, alcohol, vinegar, and cooking oil, and three solutes which were salt, baking soda, and sugar. She tried every combination of these in little plastic cups to see what dissolved and what did not (after making a hypothesis chart of what she thought would happen). She was correct of many of them, but there were surprises. Alcohol causes the salt to make clumps and not dissolve at all, which she thought was neat. Of course the kids could never tire of watching what vinegar and baking soda do when combined; the sudden fizz is even better when done in a graduated cylinder. And yes, I do realize my children are in their pajamas and Spike's hair is crazy, but it was pajama day so you will have to excuse our sloppiness.

Mixing, mixing, mixing...

All of Princess's solutions after she was finished.

The kids could mix vinegar and baking soda all day long if I let them.

A little while later, it was snack time. As Spike and Princess have been pestering me to teach them some cooking skills (and it is certainly not a bad idea since I do not want to be preparing their meals forever), we started doing some simple cooking classes. I found a printable kids' coloring cookbook on the Taste of Home website and we have started by working on those recipes. This was a fitting one for October since they were little spider snacks. The biggest lesson here was to not lick your fingers while preparing food, especially food you are going to be sharing! I made them wash their hands every time they put a finger with peanut butter on it in their mouths. They were happy with their creations in the end and enjoyed eating them.