Future Scientists

My two little grand daughters love to play scientist. For them that means mixing as much stuff as possible in a container of water just to see what happens. I of course scrupulously monitor this activity because we all know how this kind of thing can become a tragedy if not carefully supervised, i.e. the child who mixed bleach and ammonia, two chemicals found in every home, thus creating the poisonous gas ammonia chloride. I lecture them ad nuseum about doing this without my help. So what do we use? First, water of course. Second, a little food coloring. That alone gets all sorts of ooohs and ahhhs. Next some baking soda. You know where I'm going with this, don't you? And then of course the coup de grace: vinegar. After all of the excitement of that has worn off we progress to vegetable oil. They find it impossible to understand how vegetable oil can float on top of water when they get in the tub and sink! How's that for some higher order thinking from a 2 & 5 year old? All this is accompanied by lots of questions and requests for more 'stuff'. Eventually they wear out, need a snack and off they go leaving me with the mess. No matter. Who can possibly know how much learning went on there-not to mention fun? We'll be doing it again, I'm sure.
During my days as an elementary teacher, I used to do these kinds of things all the time. It's called 'inquiry based learning'. But then the 'powers that be' deemed this kind of thing wasteful. It looked like a little too much fun to be of educational value. Sooo...here I am-and happier for it.