Posted by Cindy on September 5, 2007
Grandma, read no further!
Here’s an idea from the Holidays Around the Year book that we did as part of our seasonal Friday lesson last week.
We learned the science behind suminagashi art (marbling paints) and created beautiful card covers. Inside the kids have written letters to both sets of grandparents for Grandparent’s Day. We finished them off with some raffia decoration and, voila, a great keepsake for the grandparents (and a nice science and writing lesson for school!)
**Editing to add: I bought a marbling ink set several years ago that has lasted me forever. That’s what we used. You can find something similar here. I’m sure you can make your own inks, but I haven’t been successful finding a recipe on the internet. If you find one, I’m sure others would appreciate you passing it along in the comments! 
Posted by Cindy on September 4, 2007
Our Fun Friday activity last week was an experiment from Science Projects for Holidays Throughout the Year
on chromatography. That’a a big name for separating mixtures, or in this case pigments. As complicated as the word sounds, the experiment was really very easy.
We started with chromatography of a black water-soluable marker to get a good picture of how pigments are separated during the process. Black markers are made up of many other colors and they all show up brilliantly during the experiment.
Then, to tie the experiment in with autumn, we did the experiment with green leaves. Since they’ll soon be changing colors, we talked about photosynthesis, chlorophyll and the true pigments of leaves. The chromatography experiment allowed us to take the current green pigment and find out what other pigments were in the leaf. In other words, we were able to get a sneak peek as to what color the leaves will be in a few weeks! Unfortunately, we’ve been in a drought this year, so the leaves are rather dry. It took quite a bit of effort to get enough green rubbed onto our coffee filters for the experiment to work. Even though the results weren’t as brilliant as the markers, we were able to tell that the leaves we chose will be yellow this fall.
Here are several great links for other chromatography experiments! I think we’ll dive into the candy experiment next.
Why Do Leaves Change Colors? Go down a bit for the chromatography experiment
Chromatography Forensic Science Experiment
Paper Chromatography
Paper Towel Chromatography
Candy Chromatography
