Kitchen Science

Today was a beautiful, hot, no wind day. We decided to go for a walk/ride down to one of the local playgrounds, so set out about 10.30am. Wow, it was too late and it was so hot. So after playing there for a while and Nathan rode over the bike jumps we made our way home in time for lunch.

During the afternoon the kids were hot and at a loss on what to do - there were no DVD's of interest to them so I asked Danielle if she wanted to get out one of her new activity books and sit down with me and do some. So while we were doing that Nathan came over and got out a colouring book, then both kids sat side by side and coloured a page each and then would turn over and repeat - that kept them happily busy for half an hour.

Danielle must have been rumaging through the pantry at some stage and I saw her sitting up at their activity table with a bag of dried kidney beans. Normally I wouldn't really let them use our food for play, but since we're on our new diet, legumes are not to be eaten. The beans are getting kind of old, so what the heck, they can do as they wish. I provided her with some jars and she sat there for ages sorting them out.

Nathan then wanted to get in on the action and asked for a glass of water to put a bunch into. I filled it almost to the top (about 2cm down). He sat there and plopped one in at a time. I asked if anything was happening to the height of the water and got a "nooooooo" (like, you are so dumb mum). After continuing he realised that yes it did raise the level of the water. (Just writing this out reminded me of a kids story when I was little, so after a phone call to my mum we figured out it was an Aesop Fable called The Crow and the Pitcher).

So eventually he realised that the beans were making the water level rise. Danielle came and joined us and wanted to try her own experiment.

Nathan then added some PVA glue and watched as it dispersed and dropped onto the beans. The we added a few drops of oil and then some food colouring. They were busy with their concoctions for ages.


They then sat down at the computer and Nathan played the Reader Rabbit Reading game as Danielle watched. Once the day had cooled off a little the kids went and bounced on the trampoline for a while.