I’ve been thinking that I need a regular series for this blog. I thought, “What is something my family and I are great at that I could share?” The answer was obvious. We willingly take on all kinds of projects that never, ever go the way I expect them to. (I talked about this before in my post Good Enough) So I talked to my kids and they agreed to be a part of a new series called “O’Dell Pinterest Experiments” where we try out ideas we find on Pinterest and show you exactly how it went. I let the boys name it – I wanted to call it O’Pinterest, but clearly they’re not as fun as me. 😉
Naturally my big kids wanted to head straight to science experiments. I let them pick, so Caleb (6) selected a pin with a variety of ways to make rockets and Logan (7) went for a homemade lava lamp.
**I messed up here and lost the sites where I found these activities and cannot for the life of me find my way back to give them proper credit. I’m very sorry to the people who did this better than I did. I will continue to search for your links. I promise.
We started with the water rocket, because we had all the supplies we needed at the house – it’s just a toilet paper roll with half a plastic egg taped onto the top and wrapped in aluminum foil. Which looks exactly like you think it would and that’s all I’m going to say about that. In the chaos of a weekday afternoon with 4 kids, Logan and Caleb had the materials out and got started before I could even blink – I tried to help, while handling TWO messy diaper changes and trying to calm an overtired, crying toddler. I heard comforting things from the rocket table, like, “Hey Mama! The edge of the aluminum foil box is really sharp!”
Caleb's rocket. Moving on....
As it turns out, they did very well making the rockets but covering it with the aluminum foil was a little tricky because you want to cover the inside of the tube as we well since it’s going to get wet. Mama to the rescue (kind of)! As I was attempting to figure out how to cover these things, Logan – always the encourager – was telling me, “Great job, Mama! You’re really good at that!” Meanwhile, Caleb has found a sharpie and is drawing an astronaut and a window on his. So far, all is good – this is a normal amount of chaos at our house and we’re rolling with it.
Knowing that the “goal” was to do a science experiment about how much higher the rocket flies when you apply more water pressure, I tried to ask the boys what they thought would happen if they squeezed the trigger on the hose gently or with more force. I got some insightful replies. “The extra pieces are going to fly off!” “It’s going to bust in two!” “It’s going to be wet!” “Come on, Mama, let’s go outside NOW!” There’s a reason I’m not a homeschool mama.
I have to say, it went pretty well. There were plenty of fights about whose turn it was and who had to let mama and the toddlers try their rockets, but the boys figured out how to balance their rockets on the right spot on the nozzle and got them to fly pretty high. They each did about twice and then the activity turned into “try and destroy the rockets”, “squirt each other with the hose”, and “everyone whine at mama that you’re cold and wet and she’s not helping you find clean clothes fast enough”. Overall, though, it was a winner for a 30-minute activity to fill an afternoon! Don’t get me wrong – they didn’t learn anything. But it was fun and that’s what childhood is about, right? Tip: do not let them peel any aluminum foil off while in the backyard. They will not enjoy it when they’re wet and you tell them they have to clean all of those little pieces up before they can come in.
Logan wanted to make a lava lamp, which sounded cool and looked pretty easy. So a different afternoon, which just so happened to be pajama day in 2nd grade, I told him we could try it. And honestly, it was a pretty cool experiment and it went fine. Once we got to it. The problem is – I have four kids. One really wanted to do the experiment, so he was asking me over and over again, “Is it time yet? Is it time yet?” like 7-yr olds do. The problem is, the 2 and 3 yr olds were also acting like 2 and 3 yr olds. Eva, in particular, is the reason they named 4-7 pm “the witching hour” (I know. That’s 3 hours. I didn’t invent it. It just is what it is.). She’s crying and clinging to my leg every second unless I pick her up. And the 6 year old….well, he was letting me know how unhappy he was about being sent to his room. But I will say the lava lamp was cool. You put some water in a tall glass, fill the rest with oil, and drop in a “fizzy tablet” to make the magic happen. I don’t know what fizzy tablets are, so I used Alka Seltzer. They worked ok, I think. It was cool for about a minute. So then Logan added another tablet, tried scooping out the little color blobs, and eventually added some trash. That counts as experimenting and practicing the scientific method, right?
We thought we’d squeeze in two experiments in one afternoon (seems smart, right?) so I whipped out another easy one from the “ways to launch a rocket” blog. This time all you have to do is empty a tea bag and light it on fire. The fire heats up the air inside, and it makes the bag float like a hot air balloon. The video of it on the page was really cool and simple. The first time the tea bag just burned. Which was fun because fire, but not so much a rocket. So the boys came up with different ways to set up the tea bags. There was only one time that the bag actually moved. You can see what happened.
I realize that the way I handled it was probably not Smokey the Bear’s first choice, but I finally put the phone down, flipped the plate on top of the fire and it went out. No harm, no foul. No rockets either.
So overall we had some fun, gave mama a chance to practice some patience, and did not (despite what my kids may tell you) come close to burning the house down. We didn’t really succeed but they weren’t epic failures either. What do you think – should we keep going and try some more? Or try a different blog series? I’m new to this and need help so tell me what you think!