One of the greatest joys for me in being a parent has been sharing a love of exploration with the Boy. He, like most kids, was always curious about how the world works and he loved hands on learning to dive home a lesson.
Unlike me, Wonder Boy always had a penchant for physical sciences. In contrast, I was always drawn to the biological sciences but those never sparked the Boy's imagination like physics and chemistry.
To foster that love of learning and investigation, we often did little experiments in the kitchen. We grew crystals (sugary, grape-flavored ones you could eat!). We mixed baking soda and acids to watch them foam and bubble, once we even used the gasses released to inflate a baloon. We made lava lamps and water gloves. We even made milk planets and soap monsters along with a dozen other things to fill a rainy day or to serve as a fun project during summer vacation or spring break.
But one of my favorite experiments is featured here:
For as far back as I can recall, Wonder Boy always had a school holiday for Good Friday. So we generally set aside that day to prepare our Easter creations. For this particular year, we made egg geodes to go along with our regular dyed eggs. The coolest part of this experiment is that the Boy STILL has the results of this experiment. It was fun for us all and gave us a keepsake that has lasted for many, many years!
Wonder Boy kept his love of all things physics and chemistry as he made his way through high school and beyond (really, both of them are just applied math, so it's a double love for the Boy). But being stuck in a virtual classroom, there isn't much hands on experimentation going on. These days, he watches labs performed over video, records the data, and writes up his chemistry labs from there. I truly hope that he will get a bit of hands on experience when he starts his physics lab next spring!
