Mercie is in 7th grade, smack in the middle of middle school! Sometimes she gets overlooked in my Homeschool Highlights, so I decided I would dedicate Mondays to her - Middle School Mondays! (I used to have a Junior High Junction link up for my older two, but I like Middle School Mondays better.) Also, I meant to get this posted yesterday (which was actually Monday) but life happens.
Mercie is using Apologia's General Science course this year and loves it. Today she had a super fun experiment with soap. I'm sure many of you have done this before, but we never have! I happened to have a bar of Ivory soap in my closet left over from our Operation Christmas Child shoeboxes.
She stuck the soap in water and noticed that it floats. That is because Ivory soap has air bubbles inside of it.
She cut the soap open and observed the air bubbles.
Next she put the soap on a paper plate in the microwave for 60 seconds! All the kids gathered around the microwave (in one chair!) to watch what happened.
The soap expanded so much! It was so neat to touch and feel. I didn't read the lesson in the book, so I'm not sure what the object of this experiment was, but all the kids thought it was pretty fantastic.
What did your middle schooler do today?
My middle schooler is not much for hands on learning at all but we have done that Ivory soap experiment a few times-- the water molecules expand with the heat absorption from the microwave. We did think it was fairly magical and loved how it felt afterwards. Today my son worked on math, reading, grammar, & science using (what I think are) boring workbook pages.
ReplyDeleteIt's funny how kids can be so different - Mercie loves anything hands on! It did feel really satisfying to touch the soap.
DeleteWhat a cool little experiment!
ReplyDeleteCreative as well! 😊
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