Welcome to the first edition of the Poppin's Book Nook! Our theme for this month was Princesses, Knights, and Castles, so we chose to read The Paper Bag Princess by Robert Munsch.
We have read this book several times before, and the girls really enjoy the story. After all the heroine, Princess Elizabeth is a very strong and independent character. She outsmarts the dragon to save her prince and then realizes he is too shallow and not worth her time. I can only hope my girls can be as discerning when they get into relationships!
I have tried to teach my girls that the outside is not the important part about people, but at 4 and 5 they are still enthralled in how pretty all the princesses are rather then how they behave. So I wanted to use this fizzing rock experiment to show them that the outside doesn't tell you anything about the inside.
I started by mixing baking soda with some food coloring and a small amount of water, just enough to make it moldable. If you add too much water, just add more baking soda!
Then I molded it around a variety of things trying to make sure some of the prettier colors had worse treasure, like rocks. I threw some money in the mix too, but I made sure to put more of it in the colors I knew my kids didn't prefer. It was a bit over exaggerated, but I think the point came across better that way.
I even sprinkled them with glitter and put little jewels on a few!
After letting them dry for a day or so we were ready to see what was inside. They each chose their favorite rock and used vinegar in a spray bottle or a bowl to uncover what was inside.
As suspected, they chose the "prettier" colors with the jewels. One found a rock and one a marble.
They continued spraying and dunking, spraying and dunking.
Fewer "pretty" rocks remain. They started finding coins after this which caused a great deal of excitement! Of course they were still finding some marbles and erasers and such as well.
The last rock remains. I had no idea which rock was which once they were placed on the plate, so was really fortunate that this rock had the largest amount of money (a quarter), but it was chosen last.
After we had found all the treasure (and used all the vinegar), we discussed what we found. We talked about how there was no way of knowing what was inside the rocks just by looking at them and how the "prettier" rocks didn't always have the best treasure on the inside. We talked about the characters int he book and how Prince Ronald looked good on the outside, but his behavior showed he was not very pretty on the inside. And we talked about how real people are like that too. How the prettiest people on the outside aren't always the prettiest on the inside, and you have to get to know the inside of the person to really know how pretty they are!
Make sure you visit all the participating blogs to see what Princess, Knight, and Castle book they chose and what they did with it! I can't wait to see all the creativity! Then come back and link up your related posts!
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