Tuesday, October 07, 2008

The Experimenter

I have a child who likes to experiment with things. She's been this way since she was born, I think. How does this work? Will it still work if I take it apart? Will it still work if I smash it into pieces? Will it work if I glue it back together?

My experimenter is Violet. Her current favorite thing to do is freeze things. This phase has lasted almost two years now. (In fact she took 3rd place in the school science fair--against middle schoolers-- with her "Gadget Freeze" project, where she froze different items and then tested them to see if they still worked afterwards...) I never know what I will find in the freezer when I open it. So many surprises are encased in ice for my enjoyment: frozen matches, frozen applesauce (she says don't try this-- it's gross), frozen toothpicks, frozen toys, frozen... something...

I remember one day when she was about 5, and we were unloading groceries from the car. I gave her the package of two Costco-sized mustard bottles, and she went in. A couple minutes later, the older girls yell, "Mom! Come quick!" I enter the house to find mustard splattered all over the landing and wall at the bottom of the stairs. Older sisters informed me that they saw her throwing the mustard.

Me: "Honey, why did you throw the mustard down the stairs?"
Violet: "I wanted to see what would happen."
Me: "Well, mustard explodes everywhere when you throw it down the stairs."
Violet: "The first one didn't!"

This morning, I drove to work with little stick magnets stuck to the outside of the car. I have the best hood ornaments EVER.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

What a smart cookie!
You shouldn't stiffle that kind of ingenuity. I think you should encourage her to experiment even more, say with eggs or ketchup. Or toothpaste.

GreenJello said...

Oh, believe me, Tara, she already does. I encourage it to a point, but I no longer supply the liquid soap in the bathroom, or allow markers to be taken apart where there's carpet, put the kabosh on silly putty/floam/gooey substances that embed themselves into carpet, or allow my nice knives to be transported outside of the kitchen boundaries.

Of course, this does not guarantee anything.

This is the child that tried to set fire to the kitchen table a couple months ago that we're talking about, here...

Alaina Robb said...

HEHEHEHEHEHEHE, I just hope I don't break the freezer!