By Cheryl Bac
E-mail Cheryl Bac
About this blog: I'm a wife, stay-at-home mom, home cook, marathon runner, and PhD. I recently moved to the Silicon Valley after completing my PhD in Social Psychology and becoming a mother one month apart. Before that, I ran seven marathons incl...
(More)About this blog: I'm a wife, stay-at-home mom, home cook, marathon runner, and PhD. I recently moved to the Silicon Valley after completing my PhD in Social Psychology and becoming a mother one month apart. Before that, I ran seven marathons including Chicago and Boston. Exercise is an integral part of my life. I hope to one day go back to long distance running and tackle the New York City Marathon. Right now I run after my one year old son. Although I am a stay-at-home mom, we are rarely "at home." My mom also stayed at home with my brother and me. She warned me that, although rewarding, it can be isolating. So, with her help, I learned the importance of getting out into the community and meeting other mothers. On the rare occasion when I am at home and have a hand or two free, I squeeze in time to scrapbook. As a new mom, many challenges are thrown my way. I hope my opinions, triumphs, and struggles help experienced parents reminisce, new parents cope, and parents-to-be get an honest glimpse of what the first years of motherhood can entail.
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Our grand finale from science week with grandma was extracting DNA from a strawberry. I majored in biology in college and I wish we would have done this experiment as part of a lab. It was so simple yet very impressive to actually see and touch the long strands of strawberry DNA.
1.
Aluminum foil boats with pennies: As a kid I remember making a lot of aluminum foil boats and estimating how many pennies each would hold. I think our kids might need to grow into this activity a little bit as aluminum foil is quite easy to tear and it's not easy to construct the boat you had imagined in your head.
2.
Paper clip floating on water: We did this
experiment with grandma over Christmas vacation, but this time we had many paper clips and paper towels to repeat the activity over and over again. If you have the right paper clips (thin metal), this experiment can be a lot of fun.
3.
Food coloring in milk: Our son has grown tired of this experiment, but thankfully our daughter still enjoyed seeing the colors swirling in milk after adding dish soap to the bowl.
4.
Vinegar and baking soda: Our family does a lot of activities from
Asia Citro's books. I recently saw a pin showing how she added dish soap to vinegar to make the vinegar/baking soda reaction more impressive. It's easy enough to add a squirt of dish soap to vinegar and the reaction didn't disappoint.
5.
Strawberry DNA extraction: Our son was very excited to
extract DNA from a strawberry. I was concerned that this experiment would be too complicated for him, but even his younger sister could mash up a strawberry. My mom made sure that the rubbing alcohol was very cold. This is an experiment I know we will be repeating. It was by far our favorite experiment of the week.
