Day 15: Experiments and experiences
It was a strange weekend.
This week it was my turn as the reporter on duty, and ordinarily that would mean going out to at least one community event or some kind of happening in the Foothills – but not these days. Every once in a while, we do have one of those quieter weekends where there isn’t much to cover, and for me that typically translates into writing from home and checking emails in between taking care of children – which is almost a treat as opposed to going to the office.
Now that working from home is the norm, it’s not so much a treat. In fact, it’s made for eight very long days in a row of what has quickly become the same-old.
But this morning I wasn’t the only one getting back to work; the kids were also digging into their second week of school.
They’ve learned to pace themselves after last week – a lesson Christian needed most. So after completing his science work this morning, he decided to spend this afternoon’s school/learning block putting his newfound education into practice.
Part of his lesson plan for the week included a Bill Nye the Science Guy video, and The Boy decided he should do an experiment or two of his own.
Hannah, after working diligently at her “number two” exercises this morning, was all over the idea and keenly became his little lab assistant for an hour or so.
Leaving the kids to their own devices works to a point. But today, I had to step in (only a couple of times) and lend an adult hand or cautionary advice – like when Christian couldn’t figure out how to poke a hole through the tin lid of a canning jar or nearly used a lighter right next to the bottle of hydrogen peroxide.
This is why my "office" is at the kitchen island, so while I'm immersed in writing on a deadline Monday I'm also right in the middle of the chaos to be teacher, referee, or Mom, depending on what's needed at the time. Or, you know, to stop them from burning down the house.
The first experiment, the one involving a hole, open flame, and peroxide, didn’t work out. He’d found it on the Internet last week but just couldn’t nail it. The idea was to put yeast and hydrogen peroxide into a glass jar below a piece of hollow pasta (he used penne), and apparently when you light the tip of the noodle with the lighter the chemical reaction is supposed to launch a “pasta rocket.”
Not so much. It sputtered a few times and I told him to stop before he lit more than the tip of the penne on fire.
We’re not sure where he went wrong – it could have been the fact they didn’t measure precisely, or maybe because the pasta was whole wheat, or was supposed to be a longer tube that would touch the liquid?
After they cleaned up, my two budding scientists found a few more household objects and took on an experiment that had come directly from Christian’s Bill Nye video this morning.
They filled an empty wine bottle (how did that happen?) halfway with vinegar, then poured baking soda onto a paper towel, rolled it up tightly, and fed it through the bottleneck, then pushed a cork into the top, and stood back.
It didn’t take long for the explosion, and the looks on their faces made my day. Disbelief it actually worked mixed with excitement at watching the liquid foam out of the bottle while the cork soared – “Did you see how high that went, Mom?”
Watching them learn is one of the best things to come out of this whole pandemic.
It’s rewarding, if exhausting, to be working alongside their education and seeing their minds expand even as their world shrinks.
Krista Conrad, OkotoksToday.ca
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