We have started a new weekly routine schedule at our house. Ian does best when he has predictable routines, something we have majorly been slacking on since before the holidays. Every day, he asks, “What do we do today?” So on Wednesdays, we are now doing science! “WHY? Wednesday” has been a big hit the past two weeks. We took pictures of our penny-cleaning experiment and I thought I’d share them with you.
We started off our morning exploring and doing all kinds of fun, active games, which somehow led us to counting money and playing store, which led to noticing how some pennies were shiny and some were dull. Ian said, “I have an idea! We need to do an experiment with baking soda and vinegar and water!” After discussing what he had in mind, we gathered our supplies and went to work.
First, we got out some small bowls and put two pennies in each one and added a label so we would know what to put in the bowls to clean the pennies. Ian said we needed vinegar in one bowl, baking soda in another, water in a third and one more for both vinegar and baking soda.
We made a prediction about what would happen before we added any chemicals to the bowls. It said, “Vinegar and baking soda will clean best.”
Then we waited a few (very few- impatient little scientists!) minutes to let the cleaners do their work.
Isaac wanted so badly to do something besides watch, so he added another penny to the water.
After those brief few minutes, we took the pennies out and dried them a bit with the towel. We took pictures to compare them.
Ian wrote his observations (which I translated for those of us who don’t read 4 year old script well yet).
We didn’t really have a conclusion for which makes pennies the shiniest, but because baking soda and vinegar explode together, Ian was convinced those pennies were just a bit shinier than the others. I felt that maybe the ones cleaned with just vinegar were a bit shinier. What do your young scientists think? Maybe if your scientists are a little more patient than mine, you can give this experiment a try with more time for the cleaners to work and have a definite answer for us!
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