A (kind of) handmade Christmas

I had a million ideas for handmade Christmas gifts for Alex swimming around in my head, and ended up getting two of them finished.  No matter, he certainly had enough to open and seemed to really understand Santa this year.  One of them (if you can even call it handmade) was not his favorite to open (not so showy and not easy to just jump in and use it), but we certainly had fun with it today.

















A quick web search led me here, so I chose my favorites and then added in this, plus supplies for this, and this, (most of which we has around the house...all I bought were the containers, a new box of food coloring--because coloring liquids adds interest to all experiments--and goggles--because goggles add interest to everything).
















Today, since we had no power and it's way too cold to go outside, we got down to business.  Raisin and bubble business, that is.  As a former teacher, I know I should have tried the experiment ahead of time...since I didn't, I'm glad I didn't tell him what was going to happen, because...no dice.  It certainly makes sense that carbonation would carry the raisin to the top of the glass, but there was just a mighty fizzing action and that was it.  No matter, it was still pretty impressive.





















As was the food coloring action.

















And no, we did not use beer...but we did learn that yellow plus blue makes green.

Tomorrow, or the next day, a 2009 recap and some goals 2010.