Soap

We've had a fairly constructive day here I think. Hurray!! They both got stuck into their workboxes quite merrily this morning. I decided to put the MEP maths in a box for a change (we usually do it before workboxes). The girl complained and said she wanted it for an extra!!!! Sometimes you just can't win ;0)
The boy changed the calender, did some pegging doinosaur maths pattern cards and did some more graphing activities from Teacher Book Bags. He did a page each of his letter and number scrap books (started when we were doing Letter of the Week - eek!!) Then he had his Electromag set. He chose one of the hardest circuits to make so it took ages and lots of patience on my part as we did it together but he was so pleased with his flashing lights :0)
The girl did maths, Little House lapbook, Teacher Book bag sentence activity, recorder to finish, but the main bulk of her boxes today was the Beyond FIAR Boxcar Chidren stuff on soap. Panda joined in too :0)
We read a page from 'The Story of Medicine' by Brian Ward about Ignaz Semelweiss and Joseph Lister. The we did a lovely little activity that I got from somewhere to show that soap is important in getting hands clean.
Rub veg oil into their hands.
Sprinkle with cinnamon to represent germs.
Wash in cold water. What happens? (Nothing)
Wash with soap and warm water. What happens? (Clean hands)
I told them the soap lesson from the Beyond manual supplemented with further explanation and another experiment.
The girl filled in a notebooking page from HSS about the science of soap.
In the next box was 2 different methods of soap making - sort of...
We did an activity that I remembered from the TV programme 'Why Don't You...?' that I did when I was a kid! (It's actually meant as a means to use up al the scrag ends of soap).
We cut different coloured soap up into small pieces (along with the ends of a couple of other bars) and put the bits into a polystyrene eggbox. Then we poured water on them and squashed them down. Muffin put cellophane over hers and weighted it with stones. They'll take a couple of days to dry out I think, but hopefully we'll have stripey eggbox-shaped mini soaps when they're done.
For the second method, we grated some pieces of soap up.

Put them in a bowl with some dried lavender and a few drops of lavender oil.
Add some water and mix.

Squeeze the resulting gunk into balls...

and hey presto!! lavender soap balls ;0)

I think it would work better with unscented soap really, we didn't have any. Wright's Coal Tar proved to be a stronger smell than oodles of lavender oil :0/
However, I found another method to try next time we have a go. Of course, there's always melting soap and pouring it into moulds too. Lots of ideas for nice xmas pressies I think ;0)
soap in a mould and a bit more
soap and bath salts

Anyway, we got all that done in the morning and then went visiting in the afternoon. Luverly!!