I write it on the schedule every week. Under my hand-scrawled heading, science, I write, “2 exp.” Before that it was “2 nature walks or exp.”

Then I wouldn’t get to it. I We took a few walks, drew and painted some pictures of the changing landscape, but I never made the time to pull out the science experiment books.

But last week we made dish soap. The children had been collecting old broken bars of soap for months, and finally we’d filled the empty truvia jar I’d been using to collect it.

I googled the recipe, and the children cheerfully grated the soap with cheese graters. We poured hot water over it and the children could hardly contain themselves until the next day when they could stir it. Imani chose the yellow food coloring gel for our goopy mixture, and I added lemon juice to cut grease. We use the soap, but don’t like it as well as our homemade laundry detergent from this summer.

Friday night, Imani made caramel. First she tried to make sponge candy again, ala this fall, but she learned something about sugar’s burn rate when she looked away for just a second. She decided caramel was easier and tastier, and she made that instead.

Today Esteban learned about lines of symmetry in math by folding a piece of paper in half and spreading a drop of paint from the middle outward. Chanya and Imani and Joy joined in, and soon we had pictures drying on most surfaces in the kitchen.

It’s a shame about not getting around to science…