In rifling the photographic miscellany today, I came across this photo of the twins' first science experiment. It the first experiment from a science kit given to them last Christmas by a founding member of the Legion of Honorary Grandparents - Lisa's dad Roland. When he's not too busy being an all around awesome guy, Roland is a science teacher. Or was - he recently retired, to the great loss of future generations of students.
When Zoe opened the package, she asked me to read the writing on the box: Mind-Blowing Science! Naturally this prompted her to ask the timeless question pondered by generations of young investigators: "How with this blow my mind, Mama?"
Roland made me promise that we would actually do the experiments with the kids. True to our word, every night we gathered around the kitchen with our pipettes and test tubes, making things bubble and fizz, change colors, grow, shrink, and occasionally disappear. I'm not sure whether any minds were actually blown, but they were fascinated by the idea that stuff could be combined with other stuff to Make Things Happen. They challenged my allegedly scientific brain to explain concepts like osmosis, carbonation, and acid/base reactions in kid-friendly terms, and demonstrated a curiosity about the physical world that surprised and delighted me.
You know what? Science is awesome! Mad props to you, Roland.
Also, more miscellany - now we've moved on to a new set for 2011!
Roland makes a wonderful honorary grandfather. In World Is So Small, Really, turns out he was a scout leader (or something like that) to one of my dad's grad students back in the day. I think Lisa H and I have some sort of weird vortex of world-shrinking going on.
ReplyDeleteJanuary 11th....doing great with the blog, Jules...enjoying it! Keep up the great work, and I love the pics on Flickr as well!
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