Sunday, April 18, 2004
Well I just have to report a really good homeschooling moment here. As you know, Benny and I have been working on a unit study on plants. Which basically means I have potting soil and nascent bean plants all over my kitchen, and Benny is running around saying THE MOST CHARMING things like "Look Mommy, these chloroplasts are stacks of thylakoids where the plant makes light into food" (*BURSTWITHPRIDE*) and whatnot. Anyway, so we are learning about flowers and about how different pigment makes the flower a different color, and there's this pigment called anthrocyanin that is basically purplish but turns red or blue depending on the alkalinity of whatever blah blah. So yesterday we collected a bunch of purple flowers, boiled them down in the microwave, and then took the purple water and added vinegar to one half, baking powder to the other (vinegar being more acid, baking powder being more base), and they turned red and green respectively (why green?) and Benny just about DIED OF JOY. He was so in love with the whole process it was so charming and dear. He wanted to do it over and over until we ran out of vinegar!? He was leaping about yarping about anthrocyanin pigment and vinegar and baking "porder" and it was HILARIOUS. He looked quite the mad scientist, since adding baking powder made the whole thing fizz impressively.
