Scientific Skill: Persistence

Our science experiment this week was more about learning persistence than any specific scientific concept. As most preschoolers are apt, Marshall will walk away from a task quickly if it doesn't produce the desired results immediately.  And I believe that persistence is by far the most important science skill one can learn.  So this week, I set up something that needed a couple of tries for us to figure out how best to do it.  (You can also read this that I didn't quite know what I was doing either, and was figuring it out right along with M, but I'd like to believe I masterminded it this way.....)

However before I was ready for our art project/experiment, Marshall wanted to play with his squirt gun and I showed him how to fill it up by holding it underwater.  Clearly, however, it is much more fun to pretend you are a dog and lap the water up from the bowl.  Yes, it was a very cerebral day.

So we decided to do some spray bottle painting this afternoon.  I didn't have liquid water colors so I substituted food coloring.  First, we tried spraying art paper, but the water just beaded up and ran off the paper.  Marshall was about to walk away, but I called him back and we had a talk about not giving up.  (And if he were 14 instead of 4, this is the point where he would have rolled his eyes.  Instead he just kind of stared blankly at me.)  Upon some questioning, he came up with spraying a paper towel (all on his own, I swear....I was hinting for fabric from the get go).  Alas, that didn't work so hot either.  And after he didn't even come close to suggesting fabric, I just went ahead and said, "Hey, what about an old sheet?"

So we got this piece of scrap white fabric, and went to it.  The first shots were lackluster, so we added a TON of food coloring.

As you can see, the blue was still highly disappointing.  But check out the red.

Nice, huh?  After quite a few squirts it did occur to me that it was going to look like we were covering up a murder, but hey, he was having fun.

All in all, I think M gained a bit from the persistence experiment.  If at first you don't succeed, try try again!

Which he immediately applied to his "fish canal" he dug in the backyard.

Can you tell from this picture that it's going down and then up hill?  I tried to keep my mouth shut but after lots of "fill with water, then dig where it stopped" attempts, I did point out that water typically likes to flow down hill and does not normally go back up hill.  Shh, no one tell Daddy I allowed his well tended backyard to get turned into a mud puddle.  We're going to blame it on that darn rain!