Distance Learning & My Failed Experiments

Hey y'all, it's Monday and if you're like me - you're struggling to deal with this social distancing that's going on. I've been a SAHM (stay-at-home-mom) for about two years now, but having my child in the house with me 24/7 with nowhere to take her brings a whole new definition to the term "stir crazy."

Today we started what our school, and many other schools are calling "distance learning." Basically my daughter is doing all of her learning and homework on an online platform, while I struggle to do what all teachers need a degree to do - teach her everything she needs to know. It wasn't the most perfect day, but as the saying goes, it could always be worse.

In between doing the online learning, I decided to jump onto Pinterest and find some cool science experiments to do with her to try and keep her engaged as much as possible. And, if you couldn't tell by the title, I failed miserably at both attempts *face palm*.

The first experiment I wanted to try was called "rain clouds in a jar" (I'll put the link here for you to try it yourself). Basically all you need is water, some containers, some food coloring, and *FOAMING* (this is important) shaving cream. Fill three or four small containers and one big container with cold water. Put different food colorings in the smaller containers and mix them until the water is completely colored. Spray the foaming shaving cream on top of the large container filled with water, then fill eye droppers or pipettes (we used straws) with the different colored waters. Drop the colored water onto the top of the shaving cream, and as it begins to fill with water, it will drip into the large container of water, making it look like "rain." Now, my biggest fail was not double checking that we had the foaming shaving cream, the only kind we actually had was gel and unfortunately that did not work. Failed science experiment #1.

The second experiment I tried was similar to this - but with cooking oil instead. (The link is here for you to try!) Instead of filling the small containers with water, I filled them with cooking oil (vegetable oil to be exact), and per the instructions I dumped them into the large container of water. Unfortunately, the food coloring did not shoot into streams as the instructions said it would, and it ended up just being a bowl of purple/red/green colored water. Failed science experiment #2.

Needless to say, I'm not a scientist. Even though I've had plenty of time to prepare, I've never felt more unprepared in my life to do this distance learning thing. I've never kept many "arts and crafts" type things in my home, and it's hard for me to leave the house to get these types of things with most stores either completely packed with people, or completely closed to the public. As much as I'd love to be "that mom," I'm just not.

But the moral of this story is, my daughter had a lot of fun mixing the food coloring in different liquids and she always finds joy in trying things out, even if they don't turn out right. I spent time with my daughter and I think that's what matters the most.

Are you doing this "distance learning" with your kids? I'd love to hear how it's going for you. And if you try either of those experiments up there and they actually work out - comment below with some photos or videos so we can at least watch them in action!

Mommin' ain't easy y'all - but it sure is fun.