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!

Work Plans for the Week of January 25, 2016

Last week, I was singing the praises of Monday holidays, not quite remembering that we had another one this week!

It wasn't a stay-at-home Monday holiday, but rather a skiing-all-day-with-our-friends Monday holiday. And it. Was. Wonderful. Can I just say again how happy it makes me that as homeschoolers, we've finally found our people?

It's a VERY good feeling.

I hope, then, that this week's short week goes as well as last week's short week. Although they take much more time, our hands-on projects, in particular, are well worth the extra effort. Just this morning, sitting and coloring their Mayflower map project while listening to Making Thirteen Colonies, the little kid told me that this exact thing, listening to an audiobook while coloring, is her favorite thing to do.

Happy kid, doing her favorite activity as part of school.

Here's another favorite activity that she did for school last week: the little kid decided that her Project of the Week last week was to bake and decorate a cake. The cake is just a boxed mix, and the frosting is from a can, but look at that decoration!

I'd say she definitely has a passion for food.

Another hands-on project that turned out fabulously was this Quick Six elements game:

We cut out and colored the cards while listening to Test Tube podcasts--more coloring while listening! I changed the rules of the game by including one black and white Periodic Table; when you slap your element, you also get to color it in your color. At the end of the game, I also declared winners in random Periodic Table categories--the kid who'd colored the uppermost and lowermost elements, the kid with the most elements in a row, etc. Both kids are fascinated by the Periodic Table of Elements, so even though we're moving on to molecules this week, we'll keep playing with elements.

And finally, even though I wrote an entire post about how much we love this paper model of Jamestown, here's just one more photo I took when I found the little kid playing with the houses again the other day:

They are absurdly cute. When we're done with the colonies, this model is totally going on the play shelves with the dolls and other small toys.

The little kid's  Project of the Week this week is to come up with her Trashion/Refashion Show design, because yes, it's that time again. The big kid really just wants to play on the computer this week, so her Project of the Week is to "evaluate" the links on my Educational Links page; I'm hoping that she finds something in particular that piques her interest and inspires her to further exploration.

Books of the Week include several books on China (that's the country that my Girl Scout troop is representing next month at the Girl Scout Geography Fair), a couple of chapter books for the little kid (hoping to pique HER interest!), and a couple of living books about flight for the big kid, to encourage her particular area of interest.

This week's sensory material is the light table. For some reason, I can't find what I did with the translucent pattern blocks after the last time that we used them, so I've been bringing out random things to play with every day--Geomags, lenses, colored sand, etc. I've been surprised to see that the big kid hasn't taken a ton of interest in these sensory offerings, since exposing her, in particular, to them was my primary motivation. The little kid, however, does take a ton of interest, and the big kid does look up from her novel in hand to engage in them enough that continuing my offerings is justified. I need to sit down and make a plan, however, as scrounging around on a Sunday afternoon for sensory materials is not my favorite thing.

And here's the rest of our week!

TUESDAY: I ended up assigning too much work on this day, as I didn't anticipate that we'd spend four full hours at the rock climbing place just a day after our all-day ski trip... but we did! I did require the kids to do their math and cursive and start their history, but we're finishing that history project this morning, and we'll start working on the documentary today.

For math, the little kid is still working on her Math Mammoth unit on length and measurement--there's some good calculating going on, and I'm pleased to see that it's going smoothly, which means that she has, indeed, mastered those skills. Yay! The big kid's review in Math Mammoth last week led to me actually assign her some more work on dividing fractions on this day, so she'll review some more today, and then hopefully be able to move on to geometry, where I think she'll be VERY happy to find herself.

Instead of their cursive workbooks, this week the kids will be copying a William Bradford quote every day--the bottom one here. Not only do I hope that this will cause them to naturally remember the quote, but it's also a good test of how much cursive they're retaining. The big kid already pitched a fit when it became clear to me that she didn't remember how to make a cursive capital B, but after much explanation that the ability to make a cursive capital B is required before she can go on to more pleasant things in life, she complied... eventually. And now she's sitting on the floor happily eating deli chicken and brie and reading, so the task didn't crush her spirit, after all.

We're also STILL working on memorizing "No Man is an Island" this week. The problem is that the children don't really like the poem, sigh. The curriculum does warn that it has a weak rhyme scheme, but I hadn't expected them to be so put off by that, and I, personally, find the last two lines of the poem powerful. We're mostly there, though, so I'm making them muscle on through, but I'll look harder at the next poem that I think about assigning them to memorize.

I also switched our days for history and home ec after I wrote these plans, because we didn't have macaroni yesterday. Now we have macaroni, so we'll cook today, as well.

WEDNESDAY: The history project that the kids are completing while listening to Making Thirteen Colonies is the Mayflower map from Interactive 3D Maps: American History. There are several interactive maps in this book that I think that we'll be doing for our American Revolution unit--I'm particularly looking forward to the map of Paul Revere's ride!

Way back in the summer, my Girl Scout troop voted for the little kid's service project proposal, which was to make a documentary/commercial promoting our local Humane Society. I've pushed it to the back burner for far too long, so my two will start beta testing the project this week with what is hopefully our final evolution of the idea: short films that focus on pets adopted from the animal shelter and that include the encouragement to adopt your own pet there, as well. The big kid is not happy that the troop voted for her sister's plan, so she's going to practice being a sister to every Girl Scout and also work on her Cadette Digital Moviemaker badge. The little kid, as well as leading the service project, will be using it to complete some of the requirements of her Junior Animal Habitats badge. The goal is that after my two have successfully completed a documentary on our own Spots and Gracie, they'll screen the documentary for the rest of the troop, then lead the other kids in making their own documentaries about other pets adopted from the shelter.

Our second lesson in the Your Kids: Cooking curriculum is macaroni and cheese--yum! Even though I *just* said that we'd do it today, just after I said that, I received a spontaneous invitation for the kids to go bouldering with a friend, so they're doing that instead. Macaroni and cheese is easily enough made on the weekend, if it doesn't get made on a Wednesday.

And so are pet documentaries, now that I think about it...

THURSDAY: I am SO excited for science today! After studying atoms and elements, the kids will be learning how they combine into molecules and create chemical reactions. We'll demonstrate this by exploring the way that H2O2 longs to break down into H20 and 0. In other words, we're going to make elephant toothpaste!!!

It's going to be AWESOME!

This NaNoWriMo Young Writer's Project lesson today may decide if we continue with the curriculum or try something else for writing. So far, the lessons have all been about identifying and evaluating novels, and the kids have completed them not at all enthusiastically, but not actually reluctantly, either. If they're willing to think about and create a main character just as willingly, with or without enthusiasm, then I'll trust that the curriculum has hooked them, and we're off to write our novels! If they balk, then we'll try out something else for composition and come back to this unit another time.

Again, though, we've also got a just-scheduled playdate on this day, so I won't be super surprised if we're too busy to finish school. Schoolwork is important, but so are friends and rock climbing and skiing and spontaneous playdates.

FRIDAY: The election unit IS a big hit, especially with the big kid. She has always been into politics, and she's really seeming to enjoy these assignments. This week's reading is about the products of campaigns--advertisements, endorsements, interviews, debates--so the kids will research examples of these from our current candidates.

Last week, the kids did coloring pages of the female and male reproductive anatomy while I forced them to watch the relevant Crash Course videos. The videos turned out to be way over their heads with scientific explanations, but we watched them together, anyway--I never know what will stick, especially with the big kid, and anyway, I wanted the information, myself. Because the videos were so difficult, however, I want one more lesson to cement the female reproductive anatomy before we move into the process of menstruation, so on this day we'll be making some festive salt dough models of the female reproductive system.

And yes, I'm super hoping that they'll be adorable.

Also on the sculpture theme, the kids have a clay building class on this day. If they're allowed to build from their imaginations, I hope that they don't choose to build female reproductive systems!

SATURDAY/SUNDAY: Ballet, ice skating, and Mandarin on Saturday, and *maybe* we're also going to the Varsity Vocals Quarter Finals, because the big kid and I are major dorks who looooooove watching show choirs. There. I said it.

On Sunday, then, after such an epic week, I am fully committed to spending the day in my pajamas, and getting as much of the rest of the family as I can to go along with me on this.

As for me, this week I've got a HUGE etsy order to work on, some writing assignments to complete per usual, more Girl Scout stuff to plan and organize, the playroom to reorganize now that all the massive shelves are built--yay!--and a couple of craft books to make projects from so that I can review them.

But not on Sunday, though. Sunday I'll be in my pajamas, watching Youtube videos of all the great show choirs that I saw compete the previous night...

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!