The Catalytic Decomposition of Hydrogen Peroxide--Bust and Boom!

Please don't call it elephant's toothpaste.

The kids have been studying atoms and how they combine into molecules, and exploring chemical reactions is an excellent way to expand upon and enrich that study. Chemical reactions take molecules and make them into different molecules or break them down into atoms, and you can see that microscopic process with your very own eyes!

Science is amazing, isn't it?

One of the most accessible chemical reactions with a great wow factor is the catalytic decomposition of hydrogen peroxide. It's become common to refer to this demonstration as "elephant's toothpaste," and I have to admit that I just don't get that. Yes, it's a cute name. No, it doesn't relate to anything about the process or the science behind it. Yes, kids like cute names. No, it doesn't do kids any good to expose them to the demonstration without any explanation, as if it's simply a fun magic trick. SCIENCE is the magic here, my Friends! Let your kids know that this is SCIENCE!

*steps down off soapbox*

Ahem... anyway, there are several different ways to force the decomposition of hydrogen peroxide, but as we learned for ourselves, some are less user-friendly than others.

We first tried forcing the decomposition of hydrogen peroxide using yeast as a catalyst:

It was a total bust. I doubt that it worked any more quickly than simply exposing the hydrogen peroxide to the sun would. We played around with it, had to leave for an activity, came back hours later, and were like, "Oh, it finally foamed up... yay."

Another day, we tried the demonstration again with proper supplies, and it worked like a dream.

Instead of jacking around with household supplies, I bought the actual proper ingredients, both 20-volume hydrogen peroxide and 40-volume hydrogen peroxide (for an interesting comparison) and potassium iodide.

I bought the powdered form of potassium iodide, because it's simple to make it into a saturated solution--just 1 gram of potassium iodide powder in 1 ml of water, shaken well:

You also need some sort of wide-bodied container with a small opening. When we tried this demonstration outside, we used a plastic soda bottle, hoping for an explosive exit by the oxygen, but on this day, the temperature was in the teens, and I instead chose an Erlenmeyer flask for our indoors demo. 

For the first demonstration, I poured 1/8 cup of hydrogen peroxide into the Erlenmeyer flask, then added the saturated solution of potassium iodide. The result is not, like, amazingly exciting, but does give you a clear view of the oxygen atoms being released from the hydrogen peroxide molecules:

Don't forget to touch the outside of the flask while you're observing the chemical reaction. This is an exothermic reaction, so you'll feel the warmth! 

The chemical reaction becomes more exciting when you add something for the oxygen molecules to cling to as they escape. A big squirt of dishwashing detergent should do nicely:



One of the especially fun things about this demonstration, as I'm sure you can see, is that the byproduct is entirely heat, oxygen, and bubbles. It's perfectly safe to play with:

This is the face that a kid should make when doing science!

This is also a great time to review the structure of molecules. We use this Zometools Molecular Mania kit:

With it, the kids modeled both hydrogen peroxide and water. See that extra oxygen atom in the hydrogen peroxide model? That's what we were playing with!

Finally, I asked the children to repeat the demonstration on their own. Here's Will making her saturated solution of potassium iodide:

Success!

This was one seriously fun demonstration, and I can't imagine a better way to make that information on atoms, molecules, and chemical reactions stick.

Just wait until we get to do this again outside! And yes, when I promised the kids that we could make it into a "bomb," I meant it.

An Ode to Gracie

Will deeply desires a dog of her own, and we're hoping to make that happen this summer, but this particular spoiled grey tabby of ours is pretty much Sydney's best friend and soulmate:

She is to be found wherever the children are, often sleeping inconveniently exactly where you'd rather be, but under Syd's dictate, you are not permitted to disturb her, lest that make her uncomfy:

In warm weather, she insists upon being outside with the children, and will even follow us on hikes: 

When the children go outside to play in poor weather, however, Gracie stands at the window and watches them, meowing plaintively. It's pretty pathetic.

Mostly, however, you'll find her somewhere like this:

And yes, she will let Syd dress her up. Here, she's serving as the mascot for Syd's online Girl Scout cookie shop (which you should ask me for the link for, so that you can buy some cookies from her. She takes credit cards! And ships across the US!):

And, yes, she even has her own theme song:

We WILL launch our Hunt for the Best Dog Ever this summer, because I promised the kid, and it's something that she wants very much, and frankly, it's probably something that she needs very much, as well, but I'm nervous about it on several fronts. Will we find a dog that won't eat the chickens? Will we successfully train it not to pee in the house? Will its existence be a giant pain in the ass?

But also... will it, could it, how could it ever possibly be as perfect, as deeply loved, as integral a part of our family as our beloved Spots and Gracie are?

Although I do look forward to one day hearing Will make up and sing a theme song to her dog...

An Ode to Coloring

That's another thing that the kids have been doing for hours lately! Syd especially, but also often Will, seem deeply content to spend much of an entire day simply listening to audiobooks and coloring. When they were small, I despised coloring books, as I felt that they deprived the children of their creativity, and the kids do often make their own drawings--

--but I have since come to suspect, as has most of the world, if the rise in popularity of adult coloring books can be trusted, that there is something particularly satisfying, in an almost meditative way, about just... coloring.

And that's why we often spend our time exactly here, doing exactly this:

I tend to sneakily saturate our coloring and listening with educational selections. Fortunately, the audio version of Joy Hakim's The History of Us is quite well done, so much so that Syd, my main listener/colorer, will usually choose to keep feeding discs into the stereo in order to listen to the entire book, if I start her off with it. She also just finished listening to Harriet the Spy on CD, and right this second, actually, is sitting in the playroom windowseat, petting the cat, and listening to the Land of Stories series on Playaways.

Note: I will tolerate her telling me the entire plot of Land of Stories, even though that probably takes longer than it would just to listen to them, but I require her to listen to Land of Stories on headphones, because I. Cannot. STAND. THEM!!!!!!!!!

Ahem...

Syd is as voracious a consumer of audiobooks as Will is of print books, so I should probably stop right here and share with admit to you all of the audiobooks that we currently have checked out from the library for her:

  

Yes, that list is for real. Mind you, some of those titles are ones that she chose for herself, and some are titles that I'm strewing for her to find. And that doesn't count the audiobooks that I have for myself, of course--something dry on Jamestown and an alternate history of the American Revolution. Super fun, right?

The kids are also quite tolerant of my sneaky stacking of their coloring book collection with educational titles. Here's their shelf of coloring and puzzle books:

And yep, 99.9% of those are educational. My favorite publishers are Dover, Bellerophon, and Peterson, and if I ever find a clean copy of one of those books at a second-hand shop--you'd be surprised how often that happens!--I will buy it, no matter its subject. Dover and Bellerophon are especially nice, since they have coloring books on fictional themes, but with a factual background. For instance, Will is super into dragons, and still colors from this Dover coloring book on dragons that I bought her in 2012 (Pro tip: I make my kids photocopy the page that they want to color. They can choose regular paper or cardstock, but they color that copy, leaving the coloring book clean for unlimited use!). It's got a different picture of a dragon on every page, WITH text that describes that dragon's place in mythology or culture. It's dragons AND learning! This Bellerophon coloring book of unicorns (which Amazon tells me that I bought on the same day as I bought the dragons one) is formatted identically.

Will also really likes the Color Yourself Smart book of dinosaurs, although unfortunately none of the other titles in that series are anywhere near that exciting. Get some more books on animals, medieval history, and astronomy, Color Yourself Smart!

Beyond the purely educational coloring books, the kids and I are also drawn to the often abstract, often VERY highly detailed "adult" coloring books. The kids' grandmothers have given them several of the Creative Haven coloring books, and I think that Syd and I are both working on one here:

 Oh, and I JUST finished this page from the Color Me Cluttered coloring book (which I actually received for free from a publicist--how fun is that, getting supplied with coloring books just for being me?):

I've actually got a few coloring pages that I'm working on. I tend to sit down to join the kids with whatever they're doing, so if they're coloring with markers, I work on my paisley page--

--and if they're working with colored pencils, I have my Harry Potter coloring book that I just started: 

I started it on the road, as it was a Christmas gift from my aunt and I started coloring in it about ten minutes after she gave it to me. That's why I'm coloring this page IN the book. From now on, I'll copy the page that I want to color, just like everyone else.

Of course, one mustn't forget the internet as a source of coloring material. Syd is a BIG fan of doing a Google image search for coloring pages, because that's just about the only way that the poor little lamb can color her pop culture loves, whether it's superheroes or Barbie or My Little Pony. Will sometimes jumps in for more dragon coloring pages, but mostly it's Syd and a million different versions of Pinkie Pie's Cupcake Party or whatever.

Okay, enough about coloring. While Syd is listening to audiobooks and Will is lying on the floor reading, I need to go make a database of Girl Scout cookie booth sign-ups, organize cookie deliveries for this afternoon, wash Syd's ballet leotard, find a base pattern for her fashion show garment, start on a massive birthday candle order that I've been procrastinating on for a solid week now, steam mop the kitchen floor, and start an altered book page greeting card tute for Crafting a Green World.

I said that the kids would have a restful week this week, NOT me.

An Ode to Geomags

Note: No, there are no weekly work plans this week! Near the end of last week, I began to suspect that in my own desire to stay busy to distract myself from my grief over Pappa, I've been over-scheduling the children, as well. I mean, I certainly have less time to feel sad when there's a full day of schoolwork every day AND an hours-long field trip AND a playdate AND a class or extracurricular to drive to AND some time spent shilling for cookie orders on the way there or back.

And the children, my good sports, did actually manage to get most of their schoolwork done, even so, but I began to see them gently reacting to my over-planning in probably the best way that a child can: with play. I'd go to tell them that it was time to begin schoolwork for the day, to find one or both deeply immersed in their toys, and I'd back off. Hours later, there they'd still be, happily playing. You know that I rarely disturb a focused child, so it was certainly the most efficient and least confrontational way for them to get more time for themselves.

We're going to keep that up this week, I think. I'm still going to require the kids to do their math every day, and work on their memory work (Mandarin started again last week!), and I have a selection of odd little projects--another Nature documentary that I've been wanting them to watch, thank-you letters for Christmas presents, extension recipes from Your Kids: Cooking, homemade Valentines for an exchange next week, etc.--of which I'll ask the children to choose one and I'll choose one for them each day, and, of course, there are still plenty of extracurriculars and loads of Girl Scout cookie selling, but ideally, this project-focused week will give us a chance to rest, reset, and refocus on next week.

One of the toys that was played with the most last week was the Geomags. I think that I've written about these before, and that's because they're perennial favorites, one of the few toys that have been loved right out of the box and universally for years.

They're pricey as hell, but totally worth it for us, since they're also played with so well. Every now and then, I'll add to the kids' collection for some holiday or other--the younger kid, for instance, received the pink Geomags set one Christmas, and I think another Christmas brought them the professional set. Here's basically what we have so far:



Several weeks ago, the kids became interested in using the Geomags to build anti-gravity and "perpetual motion" machines, inspired in great part by this anti-gravity spinner and this perpetual motion machine. The younger kid worked on building a triangular prism that would sit suspended inside this cube construction--

--while the older kid actually got her anti-gravity spinner to work!

The kids are both also really interested in building pyramids--when we first got these Geomags, and for years afterwards, they'd build a simple pyramid that they could transform into a "scooter dog," and they'd make it and then play pretend games with it. I haven't seen scooter dog in a long time, but I have seen several of these lying around:

Another interesting thing that I've noticed lately is the younger kid's desire to sort the metal marbles on top of the colored panels. I'm not sure what she's exploring with this, but she does it over and over, so something fascinating must be going on with it in her brain:

For the kids' next birthdays, I'm pretty sure that I'll be giving at least one of them a new Geomag set, as I've been noticing that the kids have sometimes been using ALL of the Geomags in their constructions. Here are my top contenders:

Right now, coloring books are also on the birthday wish-lists, as right this second, finished with two brief playdates with friends (while their moms and I sorted Girl Scout cookies) and our volunteer gig, procrastinating on her math, and about to be asked to help me make dinner, the younger kid is once again sitting at the table, listening to Harriet the Spy on audiobook and coloring.

She's just as busy as she needs to be.

Rock Climbers

We have gone three times in the past three weeks, and we are in love:

And yes, I get to climb, too! Although on the field trip with our homeschool group I stuck to belaying all the children, on the field trip with my Girl Scout troop Matt was able to come, as well, so he and I could take turns belaying each other:

I HIGHLY recommend rock climbing. In fact, I can't believe that we haven't gone before this! It's great exercise, in that it's both accessible (no matter how out of shape you are, you can get at least a little way up the wall) and super-challenging, it's an excellent family bonding activity, it wears the kids out so that they sleep really well that night...

...and it's fun!