Science is all around us!  Science is a fun and exciting way to experience, discover, wonder, question and understand the world around us…we ask questions, we make guesses and learn through hands-on experiences how thing work!  Through science we learn to make a prediction, observe the results and if we end up being wrong IT IS OK!!!  We learn from the experience and it usually leads to more curiosity and questions!

Science experimenting began after Thanksgiving when I brought to school two turkey leg bones, washed of course!  The children had the opportunity to feel the bones.

We put one bone in a jar of vinegar and the other in a jar of water.  The children then made guesses as to what would happen to each bone.  Some of the guesses were:  explode, get bigger, turn into a turkey, change colour, squishy, and many more “explodes”!

The following class we opened the jars-THE BONES DIDN’T EXPLODE!-we looked at and passed the bones around,  The water bone remained unchanged and the vinegar bone changed to a darker grey colour.  The children tried to break the bones on their legs, feet and with hands…would not break!  We decided to put them back in the jars till the next week.

Once again I opened the two containers and passed each bone around.  The bone from the water container again remained the same and as children tried to break it (on their legs, feet, with hands), it would not break!  The bone in the vinegar looked and felt the same at first, however as the children passed the bone around and tried to break it, the bone eventually bent in half and then broke. We then were able to see inside a bone!  The children thought this was “yuck!”, “Gross!” and “Ooo!”

I explained what happened:  Bones are strong because of calcium from food like cheese, yogurt and milk.  Like these foods, water is also important and healthy for us and that is why it did not hurt the bone!  The vinegar is an acid that breaks down the calcium in bones making them weak and that is why the bone got soft and broke!

We wondered how it might affect other things…