Oh, potion making… Miss G has done this for years and years {check this post out} and it’s still not old. During the spring and summer we do a nature version that includes all kinds of grasses and weeds and flower petals to make nature / fairy potions and it’s also become our go-to when Miss G is having a friend over {so far, they seem to love it!}
{this post contains affiliate links}
Now while I’ve been letting Miss G get herself set up for potion making for the last couple of months, we started going through ridiculous amounts of baking soda and vinegar and Brad was challenged with getting trays brimming full of magic potion overspill to the kitchen sink from our dining area every afternoon {clumsy old me didn’t possibly stand a chance, and if I’m being honest, it wasn’t going so well for him either – hah!}
Now I loooove BIG fizzy eruptions just as much as any 7 year old and letting kiddos lead the way when it comes to their play is my jam, but after several weeks of letting Grae really go for it, I decided it was time to reel things in just a little bit. My goal was to cut way back on our supply usage, hopefully encourage more purposeful potion making, and avoid the massive mess that was impossible to get to the sink without soaking the tile floor… And so, I put out this little invitation to play one day after school and I have to say, it totally worked.
All it took was keeping the potion making supplies and the potion mixing bottles nice and small! That’s it!
Here’s what I set out on our Ikea tray:
- white vinegar and a pipette {CAN}
- liquid food colouring {CAN}
- glitter {I really want to give a biodegradable glitter like this one a try}
- baking soda with a tiny spoon
- shaving foam with a medicine syringe
- several small craft jars {these would be amazing | CAN}
Besides the tray with the significant lip around the edge, I always make sure to put out an old rag just in case too. Science explorations can be messy sometimes!
And then Miss G gets to it…
There’s absolutely no right way or order when it comes to potion making {though Miss G seems to have a little system of sorts} – it’s all about experimenting, observing, and having fun!
G’s usual method? A scoop of baking soda in the bottom, then a shot of shaving foam, a single drop of colouring, and a sprinkling of glitter.
Then the best part…
VINEGAR!
How pretty is that?!
And the fun doesn’t stop after the first fizzy eruption… From there she adds to it, stirs it, shakes it, and adds more vinegar to create a second {and third and fourth…} fizzy eruption. {It’s actually amazing how little baking soda and vinegar you need when using these small vile-like containers.}
When she’s ready to move onto the next potion, she usually caps up the one she’s just finished and sets it aside.
Then onto the next!
By the time she’s done, we usually have an entire collection of potions…
Such simple, inexpensive fun.
Are you following us on social media? Find us on:
Facebook | Instagram | Pinterest | Twitter
We’d love to have you!
{this post contains affiliate links}
Because there were a couple of butterflies enjoying the orange when we were ready to take them outside, I decided to make the somewhat risky move of taking the orange slice, butterflies perched atop, outside on its own. The hut was positioned close to a door, and luckily neither flew off before I safely got outdoors. In fact, this little one continued to slip up juice from the orange for quite a while, even once completely free to go.
With our two hungry butterflies already outside and the rest of the fruit removed from the bottom of the hut, it was time to take the entire enclosure out. Though I’ve done it on my own in the past, this truly is a two person job. I gently shooed the butterflies hanging out near the bottom of the enclosure up to the top, collected the four flaps at the opening, and Brad unpinned it from the ceiling. Walking very slowly in order to keep the enclosure taut and not squish any butterflies, we brought the whole thing outside, laid it on its side in the grass, and opened up the bottom.
While you might expect them to be in a rush to fly off to their freedom, for the most part, they’re not. Except for one, I retrieved the butterflies from inside the hut by gently coaxing them to climb onto my finger, then brought them out into the open.
The cool part is that most will hang around a while, giving you a great opportunity to see them up close without mesh intruding on your view.
This is also a great time for little ones to ‘hold’ a butterfly too. All you have to do gently coax the butterfly {without touching their wings obviously} into climbing onto your finger, then place your finger on the edge of the child’s hand to make a careful transfer. You can do it lots of different ways, but I personally like putting the butterfly on the topside of the child’s hand as it prevents the gut reaction of closing the fingers around the butterfly when it decides to fly off.
When they decide to go, some will fly off high into the blue sky until you lose sight, while others will land on a nearby plant. Another possibility is that they’ll fly for a bit and decide to touch down on the grass, so be sure to be mindful of where you’re walking.
I’m so, so glad that we decided to do raise butterflies with Miss G this year. As each butterfly eventually made it’s way off, Gracen would call out, “Buh bye, butterfly! Have a funny day!” – a happy goodbye. It’s been an amazing learning experience, and without a doubt, she’s learned a ton. She uses all kinds of new words now and can tell you all about the butterfly life cycle and butterfly parts. Best of all, she’s learned this all in a hands-on, meaningful way without actually realizing that she was learning. ☺
With our butterfly enclosure ready and our first chrysalises ready to be hung, Miss G and I had to get a little creative this morning. When raising butterflies in my classroom, I used to hang the chrysalises from the inside of a wooden block that was open on two sides, but without one of those at our disposal, we decided to try and craft one. A box, some packaging tape, and a utility knife later, we had this. As you can see, it certainly ain’t pretty. Buuuut, it gets the job done.
Once the newly-formed chrysalises had been left alone for 12 – 24 hours, we very carefully lifted the lids off of the containers, gently loosening the webbing off of the container walls with a paintbrush if needed. Then we simply created tape rolls using a good strong masking tape, and stuck the lids to the ceiling of our homely box block. This is where they’ll hang now until the final step of their transformation takes place.
As for our other guys who are still busy eating, they all got a good container cleaning and fresh food. Let’s hope this is a welcomed change and not something that harms their ability to begin their transformation.
And while I was busy cutting, hanging, and cleaning, Miss G worked on her own project beside me. When she was done, she brought me her scrap cardboard and explained, “First we have fuzzy yittle caterpillars, and then they build their chrysalises. You wait for a long, long, loooooong time, and they POP out and be butterflies! Then the butterflies will fly, fly, fly away.” She never ceases to amaze me.
It’s day 4 with our caterpillars and look at what we have today! We woke up to find that three of our fuzzy little caterpillars had build their chrysalises over night. We were actually cleaning up from breakfast already when Gracen called out, “Some of the caterpillars built their chrysalises, Mama!”
And thank goodness. If they weren’t pupas today, I was going to go into their containers and do a major clean up. I know that school kits normally say that once the container is closed, leave it closed, and that handling them as little as possible is best, but it can’t be fun to live in your own poop. Besides, from what I read, serious butterfly raisers clean out caterpillar frass daily. For our 5 remaining caterpillars, it’s house cleaning day. Wish me luck!
To start out, I carefully made two large perpendicular cuts on the very bottom of the storage unit in order to open it up. Then, very carefully, I snipped out all of the mesh dividers that created the separate compartments. 
Next, using some picnic table covering plastic (found on large rolls at IKEA and hardware stores), I cut out circles just a hair larger than the circular openings along the sides of the tube. With a hot glue gun and a hand I was wiling to burn repeatedly for the sake of my students and soon-to-be butterflies (just kidding…um… kinda ☺), I glued the plastic windows to the inside of my tube to cover up the holes (gluing them to the outside would have undoubtedly been easier, but that would have also allowed my hot glue slip-ups to be more obvious, which simply was not acceptable at the time). 
In order to create some homey resting ledges for my winged friends, I glued several brightly coloured faux flowers to the inside of the enclosure too. 
In the meantime, since we’re not at the chrysalis stage yet, I pinned up the butterfly enclosure, set our caterpillar containers on the little wooden table, and set up a little reading and observing corner for her to enjoy. 
Now to figure out how we’ll hang our chrysalises… While teaching, I stuck them (still attached to their container lids) to the ceiling of a large wooden block that was open on two sides, but since we don’t have one of those, I’m going to have to get a little creative. We shall see what we come up with!
When I saw that the awesome teachers’ store in our hometown, 
This afternoon the sun was out and I decided to set up something really fun for Grae to explore and experiment with in the backyard.
The set up was pretty simple… Several differently shaped jars and medicine bottles filled with coloured vinegar (we used gel food colouring), a couple of small jars of baking soda, a couple of spoons, and a few empty mixing containers all on a tray. Oh, and some safety goggles. Because in Gracen’s world, science equals goggles. ☺
After helping her with her goggles, Grae set off to work.
As I usually do with this kind of activity, I didn’t give her any instructions. I simply said, “Do you want to play?”
The answer was an excited ‘yes’, and after a few questions about whether or not she could dump/mix/pour things (of course the answer to all was yes), she got started.
While she’s seen the reaction baking soda and vinegar have while 
And she loved it. Mixing a little bit of this with a little bit of that in order to cause colour changes and fizzy foam eruptions was right up her alley.
My little scientist made reaction after reaction, delighting each time she caused foam to spew out of the top of her jar.
One thing that was interesting is how the colour of the vinegar seemed to change with the addition of baking soda. In the case of the orange and the pink, the colours seemed to explode with brightness as the reactions occurred.
With almost all of her baking soda resources used up and her largest jar of vinegar left, we fetched just a little more baking soda from in the house.
It started off slowly, but the reaction did not disappoint. After scrounging leftover baking soda from wherever she could, she managed to create enough fizzing foam to have it flow generously out of the top of the jar. Success!
