A Little School Fun in the Kitchen

Last week, during our study of Israel, we cooked an Israeli dish with chicken, lemons, and oranges. I thought it was prettier before we cooked it and that it had a bitter taste when it was done. It wasn't one of my favorite dishes we have made for History. We all tried it, and a couple of us actually ate a lot of it. It's always interesting to get a feel for what people eat in other parts of the world. As you can see, Patrick is the one helping me the most in preparing the dish. He'll never turn down a chance to cook...he loves it!

Yesterday, we did a couple of experiments to demonstrate diffusion rates and osmosis. First, we added food coloring to two containers of water. We stirred one of them and left the other one alone. The food coloring diffused faster in the stirred water, as we had predicted. Next, we did the same thing with warm water and room temperature water. The food coloring diffused more quickly in the warm water.

Next, to demonstrate osmosis, we filled two containers with water and added salt to one of them. We placed an egg yolk in each one. The floating egg yolk is the one in the salt water(which was also a good review on density). The experiment demonstrated how the water traveled from the egg yolk into the salt water, causing the yolk to shrink. On the other hand, the fresh water in the other container traveled into the yolk, causing it to expand.

We are still using Bob Jones for Science and loving it. It's thorough but easy to understand, and it has good hands on suggestions. I can also add some of my own ideas to it.