A Marshmallows and Spaghetti Kinda Day

Today we did Science!

A long while ago when we first started on our HE journey, I bought a book of science experiments in the certain knowledge that science was one of the things we would do. My eldest flicked through it and shrugged, and my youngest played with the lovely chunky spiral binding and then threw it at his sister. The book has, therefore, sat on a book shelf for the best part of a year and a half, with only a change of scene when we moved.

Then, last week, our very-nearly four year old little guy came bouncing into the kitchen. “Look, Mummy, look!” he exclaimed, “My want to do THIS!” He was holding the long-forgotten book of science experiments in his hand, and quivering with excitement at the prospect of building structures out of spaghetti and mini marshmallows. We agreed we would buy the necessary items as soon as possible, and so the next morning and one trip to Tesco later, we were ready to go.

This is what we got up to:

The first stage was to make a cube - we soon discovered though that the shape just isn't stable enough to stand up on its own, and that spaghetti snaps really easily. (Also, when you have a whole bowl full of mini marshmallows, you might just end up "accidentally" eating one. Or three.)

While Elizabeth experimented on her own, Alfred and I did some tests with adding in some diagonals - and guess what? It not only stood up, but took the weight of a toy camper van, much to his excitement.

Elizabeth's perseverance with the "stupid" spaghetti paid off - after some trial and error and a lot of peering at the book, she managed this very respectable pyramid.

And just because she could - "Look, Mummy, I've made an 'E' for Elizabeth!"

We had a great time, and those marshmallows are, it must be said, very yummy indeed and make a lovely mid-morning snack!

Alfred then decided he wanted a structure that was strong enough to actually play with, so we went out and bought cocktail sticks, BBQ skewers and some blue tac – I'll no doubt post again soon on our progress in that department!

Just in case anyone is interested, the book we used was this lovely little tome.