Eggs and Dye and Miniature Volcanoes and a Mad Scientist

Of COURSE we dyed a million eggs last week:

Do y'all do the thing in which you put your egg in a whisk to dye it?

It's quite effective.

I hate to waste all that beautiful colored water, so when the entire batch of hard-boiled eggs had been dyed, I poured another good glug of vinegar into each container of dye, and gave each girl

1. a dinner plate with a layer of baking soda spread out on it, and
2. an eyedropper.

Colorful miniature baking soda and vinegar volcanoes are FUN!

I love the fizz!


Both girls always seem to really enjoy whatever project we're doing at any given time, but every now and then a certain project will just click with a certain kid, and she will be absolutely immersed for an endless time, clearly deriving such pleasure that it's a joy to watch. The last time that Willow made oobleck (just a few weeks ago!), she was engrossed in it for days, adding cornstarch and playing with it, adding water and playing with it, adding a little more cornstarch, splashing around, etc. But this colored vinegar and baking soda and jars and plates and eyedroppers? For whatever reason, this was Syd's favorite thing to do for several hours on this day.

Eventually, eyedroppers were too small a chemical reaction, so I gave her the entire box of baking soda and a spoon:

She played--


and played--


--and played!


The deterioration of our work surface as the day goes on cracks me up every time. And yes, she did clean up her work entirely by herself, putting utensils and containers in the sink, food coloring and eyedroppers on the counter, empty(!) baking soda box in the recycling, and spray cleaning and drying off the table and the floor underneath it, without actually even much of her typical fuss--she'd had THAT much fun!

We didn't get to all of the Easter activities that I'd hoped we would. We didn't decoupage eggs, didn't paint our blown eggs, didn't study the various religious and cultural myths of springtime, didn't complete any of the Easter-themed worksheets that I'd been saving up. However, another great thing that I've learned about homeschooling--holidays become more "-ish"-like: Didn't decoupage eggs BEFORE Easter? Eh, we'll do it next week. Didn't paint our blown eggs? I'll bring them out next time we're painting. Religious myths? We can make our toilet paper tube Resurrection scene after we finally collect that tenth and final tube, and do all the Passover stuff when those books and videos make it back to the public library for us to check out.

At least we've done one thing right, in that we're up to our ears in eggs!