Getting Science-y for WhyMommy

I lay in bed yesterday morning pondering what science experiment we would do later in the day. The kids are on Spring Break. I have to admit that my pondering did not get very far before I fell back to sleep. I was woken a few minutes later by my son asking me if he could open one of his birthday gifts. I was conscious enough to tell him to open it on a tray.

To back up, my son is the youngest. His toys and crafts are either brand new or quite old. No in between. He loves a partially dry lump of Silly Putty. He regularly uses PlayDoh that is more brown than any other color. His Moon Sand has seen better days.

For his birthday, I shopped for things that were new to him. He’s 7 and in first grade. Science is king for him. If it moves…grows…shines…he wants to know about it. He loves Science class at school. His gifts were:

• Glow-in-the-dark Silly Putty.
• Modeling Clay…multicolored.
• Dinosaur Dig Kit.
• A book about dinosaurs.
• A book about flags.

I also bought him G.I. Joe Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow, and Pirates Lego.

This morning my son asked if he could do the Dinosaur Dig Kit. I told him to use a tray. I walked in to his bedroom to see him lying on the floor chipping away at a lump of tiny sand pellets glued together. He painstakingly chipped away at the lump for quite some time. He and I chatted as he scraped and carved.

He speculated on what his dinosaur would be. Would it be a Stegosaurus? Or would it be a Tyrannosaurus Rex? Pterodactyl? He was intrigued.

While he chipped away more and more sand, I rearranged his book case. I found a pile of Dinosaur books that we consulted to check our findings. I also found a pile of Stage 1 Readers that he has outgrown. We’ll send them to his cousin in England.

He proudly held up the Dinosaur. It looked like a TRex. So we called it TRex. He found another dinosaur on his floor that was like  TRex with a crest on its head…Carnitosaurus…I think.

He wants to reuse the kit. I think we might glue all the pellets together and hide the dinosaur. Nothing better than recycling a science kit, right?

I dedicate this post to my friend, WhyMommy. She is a planetary scientist who blogs at Toddler Planet. All the best to you and your family tomorrow and on.