Star Student Science Experiment

#1 was the Star Student this week in her class. You can pretty much guess what that entails - bringing in pictures, special show-n-tell, telling everyone your favorite colors, foods, etc....

It seems to be the most exciting thing one can possibly do in Kindergarten.

One unexpected responsibility of the Star Student is to present a science experiment to the class. It can be just about anything. Some popular topics include magnets, water cycle, animals and you can guess the rest.

True to form, no idea we came up with was good enough for our daughter. We pored over books and the internet looking for ideas and she just wasn't satisfied with any of the standard options. She wanted it to be unique and she actually wanted to be interested in the topic. The nerve.

Let me tell you, it was A LOT of work to settle on something, but we finally did.

DISSIPATION

We based the experiment off of this, which luckily came with a video. Easy peasy.

Micah, aka: Mr. Arnold the Science Guy, with the help of his lovely assistant, explained to the class that permanent ink is "hydrophobic". However, it dissolves in rubbing alcohol and the ink molecules "dissipate".

The children wrapped a square of t-shirt material around a cup and secured it with a rubber band. They made designs on their t-shirts with colored sharpie markers. Then, we went around the class using medicine droppers to drop alcohol on the designs. The collective "WWWHHHHOOOAAAA" that echoed through the class told us we had done well.

The children were pretty impressed and the teachers couldn't remember seeing the experiment before which meant our Kindergartener had ticked all of the boxes on her list = SUCCESS!!

After getting through this with her, I'm not sure how much I'm looking forward to the science fair projects of later grades. But, I am quite proud of her joys and victories.