It was a rainy Monday and Eva was looking for something “super fun” to do after school. So we went to the basement and pulled up some KiwiCo crates! I tend to hoard these kits but it works out when all of the sudden we’re met with a rainy day and need some fun. 🙂
She decided on the Puking Pumpkin Science experiment (good thing, since that’s the only box that was actually geared for her age!) but the unfortunate part was that we needed an actual pumpkin! So our quick rainy day activity — turned into an outing to the grocery store! Lucky for me, the grocery store had a shopping cart designed like a race car, so instead of a quick trip to the store, we got to drive up and down every aisle in the shopping cart designed like a race car before buying our $1.50 pumpkin! Once we made the rounds, checked out and said a tearful goodbye to the shopping cart, we were on our way back to the experiment!
We got home and washed off the pumpkin in the sink. Then it was time to start the directions, step one: carve the pumpkin. That was when I decided this was a very complicated kit! 🙂 I kid, I kid. But it did throw me off because I don’t particularly enjoy carving pumpkins and carving the pumpkin independently is a little out of Eva’s range of abilities. We usually stick to decorating and painting pumpkins, not carving them. But, we drew, cut, scooped, dried, and did the whole shebang then finally it was time to start… step two!
This crate was a fun experiment for her because it explored chemical reactions, color mixing and was just some straight up Halloween fun! She ended up measuring out the ingredients and mixing baking soda, foaming gel and citric acid into the flask and the pumpkin. Then she got to choose which color she wanted the pumpkin to “puke up” and she chose purple — so she had to make the color with red and blue dye. Though I think she went a little heavy with the blue!
Then it was time to put it all together and luckily we put the pumpkin in a deep baking dish. 🙂 She was very excited to pour the liquid from the flask straight into the pumpkin to see what happened!
Eva’s official review was that the crate was “super, duper fun”. So I guess that’s two thumbs up for the puking pumpkin. From start to finish, including the trip to the grocery store to buy the pumpkins, and the drive in the race car shopping cart, it took an hour and 45 minutes. However, Javi came home from school and did it with Sean in about 23 minutes. So to each their own! 🙂
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