Chemistry

It's hard to squeeze science into the children's school schedule because young students spend most of their school time on the basics: reading, writing (spelling and penmanship) and arithmetic. When you add a little history, geography, music, and p.e., there's no time left for science. It's frustrating!

Kara decided to try something different this semester. The children started their semester with Science Week in which science was the top priority. Other school subjects were put off until after science was finished for the day.

On Monday of Science Week we got off to a poor start because our young students weren't home. They overnighted from Sunday to Tuesday at Grandma Karen and Grandpa Tim's home. Such is the life of homeschoolers. So Tuesday when they returned Kara pulled out the new science course and got started on lesson one: What Is It Made Of?

On Wednesday I became the science teacher because the first science unit was chemistry. When I was a student I was fascinated with chemistry and I earned a degree in chemical engineering.  Lesson two was on molecules and how they are formed. Two random atoms will not necessarily combine to form a molecule. There are rules that must be followed. For the experiment portion marshmallows and toothpicks were used to make molecules. I'm not sure my young students got the point of the lesson from the experiment (I didn't), but they enjoyed eating marshmallows.

Lesson three involved mixing together different liquids after first predicting what would happen. Would their color change? Would you see a reaction? The children fought over whose turn it was to pour liquid A into liquid B. Such enthusiasm! We got a reaction from vinegar added to baking soda water. 

Lesson four started with predicting which liquids would be sour and which would be not sour (i.e. bitter and sweet). Viva and Jake tasted everything. After Viva tricked Bentley into tasting something bitter, he wouldn't taste anything more.

After tasting the liquids we used red cabbage juice as an acid-base indicator. We discovered that all the sour liquids were acids. This part of the experiment went well with more enthusiastic participation. The only glitch was that one of our bases, Tums added to distilled water, did not turn the solution green as it should have. (The children weren't disturbed by this, but I sure was. An antacid is a base and it should turn cabbage juice green! Is Tums not really an antacid?)

In lesson five we played more with the acids and bases. If you add the green base to the pink acid, you will get a purple neutral solution. It's magical. The trio all loved that part of the lesson, so after finishing with the formal lesson I left them at the table playing with the remaining solutions. They had a great time. I'm not sure how much they understand about acids and bases, but it's a start. 

Lesson six was about mixtures. Milk and water mix well. Oil and water do not. Yet again pouring liquids together was a big hit. The melted butter kept solidifying which was annoying, but real science is like that: problems a plenty. In the second part of the experiment we added soap and observed that oils mix better with water after soap is added.

Lesson seven was about un-mixing or separating things once they are mixed. It's easy to do if you can separate them with your fingers or with a sieve, not so easy if the mixed substances are small particles or if they have combined chemically. For our experiment we used coffee filters to do low budget chromatography. The trio were fascinated with this technique. I was frustrated because the yellow color was usually obscured when the green and blue colors climbed over yellow to get higher on the filter paper. We played a guessing game after the lesson and we were right about half the time.

Lesson eight was titled tasty molecules and we discussed how changing a food molecule's structure changes its taste. The experiment called for blind-folded taste testing. Bentley was a better sport about trying the foods than I thought he would be. He actually tasted a few things. He drew the line at raw potatoes. Viva and Jake were excellent participants.  

For lesson nine we made goo (glue and starch combined) to illustrate how combining polymers can change their nature. Viva loved playing with the goo. Bentley did not.

The final lesson was on enzymes (living polymers) and the many things they do. The experiment portion involved making yeast bread dough and observing how the yeast must be maintained at the right temperature or it dies. (Should I confess that as of this posting, we have not yet done the experiment portion? We will!)

Viva really likes science. Jake enjoyed all the experiments, but wasn't always eager to get started. Bentley was okay with science as long as he wasn't forced to step outside his comfort zone: no touching or tasting. 

A critical part of science experiments is recording your observations, so any serious science course involves some note taking. Jake and Viva are very slow writers. They are only six, so this is to be expected, but it adds a lot of time to our science class if the twins fill out every notebook page for each experiment. I only had them fill out one or two sheets from each experiment and we discussed the other worksheets without writing down their responses.

Our first science unit of the year was quite successful. We finished Elementary Chemistry. The trio had fun while learning. (The science curriculum Kara chose for this year is the elementary level of Real Science 4 Kids.)