It's hard to believe yesterday's weather when you look outside now. I love to play in the snow but the months of cold temperatures have made me long for spring, unless of course it should happen to snow 2 feet!
We are knee deep (sorry, my mind is still on snow) into our study of the Chinese New Year and China. I went shopping at an Asian market the other day and found myself staring at frog legs. Once I got past the shock and swore off all food experimentation, I was amazed at the number of familiar items with Mandarin character writing and new names. One item was a package of large sugar crystals.
I grew up close to Colonial Williamsburg and often saw rock candy on a stick like Colonial children ate. Our family even made it a few times. Naturally the packaged sugar crystals went into my grocery basket. At school I showed it to the children. They weren't sure it was like the sugar they knew so I gave them each a chunk. They were as amazed as when they see a magic act!
The next step was to start our own science experiment and make sugar crystals. We heated 3 cups of water and poured it into a clear vase. We added sugar by the tablespoonful, stirring between each. When the sugar disappeared I used the word dissolve in explanation. Thirty tablespoons later we could no longer make the sugar dissolve and I explained the water was saturated with sugar. As I hung string from a tongue depressor I told them the water would evaporate into our room's atmosphere leaving behind the crystals. After dying the water blue, we marked the water line so we could mark the progress and took a picture for posterity.
Yes, this is preschool, but really folks, you can learn anything if the end result is...sweet!
Tomorrow is Conference Day so we don't have classes. Have a great weekend!
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