Last night I found Gianna in the bathroom filling a candle with my skincare products and toothpaste. In a (rarer than I would like) moment of good parenting, I took a beat before speaking and instead of saying a sharp “Gianna Rose!”, I calmly sat down and said it looked like she was working on something and could she explain to me what it was.
This is always the best way to respond to Gianna’s creations, but I don’t always manage it. She is a very bright child and full of ideas, so she is rarely bored. She is also wildly creative and inventive, and will make do with whatever is around her for materials to complete her plans. If not harnessed and channeled properly, her impulses and desires to created can quickly turn from constructive to destructive. For example, one afternoon after quiet time, I walked into her room to find her blinds shredded into tiny pieces because, wanting to have a picnic and lacking any play food (located in the living room), she created some out of her blinds. Needless to say, we spend a lot of time talking about the right and wrong places to create and as much time outside as possible where she can dig and mess and create to her heart’s content out of the abundance of materials that nature provides.
But sometimes, living in Michigan as we do, we need to be inside. So while we did have a conversation last night about how we don’t create things out of Mommy’s candles and toothpaste and the consequences of that (we have to throw out the candle), I do want to honor her desire to experiment and create, so I resolved to do more (read: any) science experiments with her. And so this morning we completed our first science experiment together.
G has been loving her Color Box 3 work (in which she sorts color shades from light to dark), so I decided on a color mixing lesson. The set up was pretty simple- 3 glass jars with water and food coloring, one for each of the primary colors, a medicine dropper, and a glass cup to mix in. We also had on hand a rag in case of spills and a bowl to pour the mixtures into when finished.
First we talked about how we can make all of the other colors by mixing the primary colors together in different ways, and then after I showed her how to use the medicine dropper, she experimented making various shades and hues of all of the colors of the rainbow. She delighted in creating violet, her favorite color, and discovering that more yellow added to the green she had mixed made it lighter. And she loved the black/brown she created when she mixed the three colors together most of all.
This experiment was a win in so many ways, but for me the most important one was that I was able to give Gianna an outlet for her need. She felt a sense of accomplishment and pride in her work, and now knows that she can ask to do an experiment with me instead of trying on her own in secret.