Don't Tell Connor that this is Homeschooling

As soon as Connor finished Kindergarten, we put on our shoes and headed for the door.  We were going to go out for ice cream to celebrate.

Except we never made it past the front porch.

We opened the door and discovered a large package that the mailman had left for us.  It required our immediate attention, especially since it was addressed to Connor and Lex.

Inside were birthday gifts from their cousins!  One of which was a science kit.  All plans for ice cream were immediately forgotten, and not more than 10 minutes after Connor proclaimed that he was on a two-week vacation from homeschooling, he was right back at it again.  Seriously.

Shhh!  Don't tell him that it's actually learning!

This experiment was several steps long.  First we made different colored solutions, and then we grew some super-absorbent polymer crystals in the blue, red and yellow solutions.  Then, we put the blue, yellow and red crystals in a test tube, and the colors blended together to make a rainbow:

Connor loves his magic rainbow tube!

This experiment was called garbled marbles:



Connor had to sort tiny super-absorbent polymer crystals by color.  And they were tiny.  About the size of a mustard seed.  But then we added water, and they each grew to be the size of a marble:



He was surprised that all the different colors turned out to be the same size when they were finished.  He had predicted that the different colors would grow to be different sizes in the end.



I think this last experiment might have been Connor's favorite.  It's the ghost crystal.  We grew super-absorbent polymer crystals that looked like ice cubes, only when you drop them into a glass of water, they basically disappear.  The chemical structure of the cube refracts light differently in water than an ordinary ice cube.

You can see the cubes better in the glass in this photo than you can in real life.  I think the camera flash exposed them a bit.



So, yes, Connor is really enjoying his science projects during his vacation from homeschool.  He just can't help but learn things, I guess.