Clearance Racks, Preventative Dental Care, and Budding Scientists

You do know about Candy Experiments, don’t you??

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Skills we can teach little ones:

(I knew my B.S. in Biology would pay off one of these days)

* How to create a hypothesis – an educated guess – before the experiment

* How to use clean specimens and equipment, as well as how to keep all other factors constant so that they know for sure the reaction occurred because of the specimen itself.

(For example, we pulled a candy pumpkin out of baking soda water and poured vinegar on it. The outside of the pumpkin fizzed. We might have concluded that the pumpkin reacted with the vinegar, when in fact it was the baking soda residue, don’t ya know. So, I showed Vivienne the importance of using a clean pumpkin for the vinegar bit, and we learned that a candy pumpkin will not be moved – no way, no how – by a teaspoon of vinegar.)

* How to record results and observations during the experiment

* How to evaluate their hypothesis: why was it correct or incorrect?