Tie dyed milk, 2nd edition

This is a fun, easy, extremely kid-friendly science experiment to do at home! We did this one a few years ago but hadn't revisited it since then. We recently had a string of school delays/closures because of winter weather, which was the perfect time to try it again! 

All you need is a shallow container, milk (the higher the fat content, the better), food coloring, a few drops of dish detergent, and toothpicks (the tines of a fork will also work).  

Pour the milk into the container, then add drops of food coloring.  

Dip the toothpick or fork into dish detergent, then dip it into the food coloring and see what happens! (Information on the science behind this experiment can be found here. It was still a little over Oliver's head, but a lot of fun to do!)

Theodore had fun blowing on the milk at first. :-) 

The first time we did this experiment, we used 2% milk (I think?). This time, we used half-and-half, to see if it would be any different, and it was! I remember the first time, after the kids stopped poking the toothpick in the milk, the food coloring would pretty much stop moving around and changing. But this time, using milk with a much higher fat content, the colors would continue to shift and swirl around by themselves for 10-15 seconds. Very neat!! 

A few pictures

The other day after school, we went home and picked up Mr. Pickles, and went to a park to explore and wander around. And to our surprise, we found that the bluebonnets were already blooming! Buttercup and Oliver immediately took off sprinting across the field, jumping over patches of flowers and basically acting like two kids who've been sitting still far too long. :-)  

After the excitement wore off, they settled down and let me take their picture. :-) Later on, we continued exploring, and Mr. P. tried to jump into the lake (ha ha!) so we headed to the playground to play instead. It was a super fun afternoon!

Theodore at the duck park

One morning this week, I didn't have any errands or playdates planned, so Theodore and I headed to the duck park to play and explore. Here are some cute pictures! 





The next few pictures are a series of him jumping onto the metal grate:

Nothing like a stick, rocks and some dirt to make a kid happy. :-)