Make your own Geodes!

We try to cover a lot of earth science projects in the spring time. It just seems to fit in nicely with Earth Day and the fact that we are spending more and more time outdoors as the weather gets nice. 

A few weeks ago we decided to try making our own crystals and geodes. Following a few other blog posts off of Pinterest, we came up with this experiment. 

We saved egg shells for a few days and we were careful to break them open leaving 3/4 of the egg shell still intact. Monster then helped me mix different ingredients from the kitchen with hot water. 

We decided to try the following:

• Sea Salt
• White Sugar
• Brown Sugar
• Canning Salt
• Ice Cream Salt
• Borax

We adding food coloring to each liquid so our crystals would have some color and filled our egg shells with the concoctions. 

We waited a LONG time for our crystals to form. It took over two weeks for any activity at all. Finally small crystals started to form on the outside of the shells. After another week all the liquid inside had evaporated and crystals had formed inside the shells as well.

The sea salt and canning salt made the best crystals on the outside of the egg shell. 

 The borax and ice cream salt made really cool crystals on the inside of the egg shells. And the sugars really didn't do much.

The salt separated the colors in the liquid making some really pretty egg shells. 

After we were done exploring the boys used the egg shells as a sensory experiment and did lots of smashing, stomping, and breaking of the crystals and egg shells. It is a great way to get rid of some pent up energy, ;)

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New words: Geode, crystals, evaporation, dissolve

Foresight

Me in the morning vs. Me at the end of the day.

Tea for Three

It is another rainy spring day here. That and the boys are still tired from camping over the weekend, and I am sick, again. Trying to come up with calm, non-argument inducing activities that doesn't make too big a mess isn't always easy. Usually we stick to movies, playdough, puzzles, lego towers, and books.

Monkey asked last night if we could have a tea party, at approximately 7:30PM. Half an hour from bedtime, just after dinner, and me barely keeping my eyes open and myself upright from the cold I am fighting. "Maybe tomorrow" I suggested. Lucky for him I had enough rest, and gumption, to set up our tea for three this morning.

Monster likes his with milk, Monkey drinks his plain, both have chamomile and I drink a caffeinated green tea. I even broke out a silly British accent "Good day, sirs! Would ya like a spot o' tea? Are you enjoying the weather?!" Monkey told me it was a great tea song, and Monster asked me to please stop. I guess they were not impressed.

Of course we don't do much without some sort of educational aspect to it, and we did a big lesson on tea a few months ago, so I just touched on what we had spoken about before: where tea originated, how it traveled around the world, what tea comes from what countries today, and how different people drink their tea.

If Monster wouldn't gag at the thought, we'd do a history of coffee and have a decaf party next week!