Little Miss Scientist

One of Milly's present requests for Christmas was for a science kit "because I'm in to science now".  She asked and she received.  This school holidays we have spent mainly indoors.  It's either been too hot to go outside or torrential rain for days.  Plus our kids haven't wanted to go anywhere or see anyone.  They are quite content playing together or on their own.

One rainy day Milly asked if we could open the science kit and do some experiments.  Sure can.  With two eager brothers as assistants to watch on.

The first experiment we tried was making a volcano using play dough, food colouring, vinegar and bicarb of soda.  Milly was worried it might explode in her face, so she had Henry do the stunt work while she kept the protective glasses on.  Our volcano made some hissing sounds but not much happened, so we put in more bicarb and more vinegar and waited again.  Still not much, and not the oozing we were hoping for.   We kept adding more bicarb and more vinegar until it bubbled out and over the top.  Success at last (eventually).

Our next experiment was to make slime.  The kit provided a gelatin mix and we needed to add specific quantities of water and some food colouring and then mix it all together.  This was a big fat fail.  We ended up with a green milky liquid that resembled and felt nothing like slime.  We decided to leave it overnight to see if that would change the mixture but it didn't.

Our third experiment was to attach a wet bit of string to an ice cube by sprinkling it with salt.  Another disappointing result.  Our string did not stick and we ended up with a puddle of salty water.

Oh well.  I think the only lessons learnt here are about patience and accepting failures.  It was still fun and we still have lots of other experiments to try that might work.