Esme's science experiment

We bought food coloring today, new shiny bottles for her.  Then I had her get the writing journal and a marker, and write down 'in code' the experiments she was going to do.  We wrote a 'key' of the colors so she could write just letters (and reduce the stress of the writing) and make 'equations' to record the 'findings'.  We talked  about a 'hypothesis' but she didn't get that - maybe next time.  She did guess once what she thought something would make, red and green would make black - but then she saw it was brown, so there was a moment of interest there. 

We put one drop of each color into the small container of water and used a white spoon to mix and tell what the color was.  Then she carefully wiped the spoon on paper towel (like a true scientist, not messing up her results!) and recorded the result in her book.  If she wasn't sure what the color was, I had her drop some on to the paper towel to double-check.. she decided blue plus green food coloring was 'light blue' because the mixture was lighter on the paper towel than the blue looked like by itself.  I had to agree that was what it looked like... 

After we had gone through as many of the variations as she thought were important (I reminded her to check the equations and see which ones we had not done - she did well!)  Mark had made a container of oil, and we tested what the color did in the oil.  It made 'dots', she said.  We put some water in the mix, and it made bubbles AND dots.  Then we put some of the oil on top of a container of water, and dropped food coloring into it.  It made dots - but the spoon pushed the food coloring deeper into the water, and it made a 'whoosh' and colored the water underneath. 

After we cleaned up I had her come upstairs and 'explain her findings' to Daddy.  We answered a few questions and made a sheet about it to send to her teacher.

We also did a sheet of 'find the missing numbers' and her one sheet of homework from school.  She did measuring and length worksheets last night and this morning before school.  I am trying to do 'extension' without going too deep into the subtraction and multiplication they will be doing in the next grades... there is a lot we can do in science and math that will help her use better language - bigger, smaller, above, below, longer, taller etc etc... 

Her behavior was MUCH better today, and that continued when she was home, as well.  I got her to bed at 8 pm again to be up at 5:30 am...