My kids are convinced I'm the meanest mom ever because I make them do Summer Workbooks, which do work great by the way! However, sometimes you have to be a little more covert and I decided we'd have some fun with science kits that I picked up at Michaels....they won't even know they're learning... moohaahaa (evil laugh!). Our first kit was making their own Rock Candy...super fun! How can a kid not enjoy something that involves eating pure sugar, but along the way they learned about measuring, molecules, atoms, super-saturation, and crystallization, not bad for 9 a.m.!The kit was great, it's the Smithsonian Rock Candy Kit, I paid less than $10 at our local Michaels and it included everything we needed except sugar, water, and a scale for accurate measuring.
The instructions included a good basic explanation of how crystals form, including what molecules and atoms are, although a picture would have been helpful here; it also had instructions that both kids could read and understand. It includes 3 flavor packages, berry, lemon and cherry but you can only make one flavor at a time; there is an order form inside that you could purchase more equiptment so you could grow more than 2 at a time.
It's a great introduction to crystals, everything we used was familiar to the kids; water, sugar, and the provided color and flavor packages. No complex chemical names or words they couldn't pronounce.
The morning of day 2 (Bailey is still in bed), and the crystals are really starting to grow now, it will be a few more days before they're done, but Collin could clearly see the shapes starting to form. In a few more days I'm sure they'll be ready to eat!
