Anyone else struggling to make a child take his/her/their medicine, because even with camouflaging and puddings and all kinds of other tricks, the medicine still just tastes awful? Why does medicine have to taste SO BAD? Is there a scientific reason behind this? All good questions that my children (and other people’s children) have asked me recently, so I turned to my scientific sources to find an answer. It turns out that orally given medicines often taste bitter, and that c

Today I want to talk about traveling, because for the past 4 months, my family and I have been on sabbatical in Israel. Getting here and enrolled in school and adjusting to daily routine here was interesting, to say the least, although relatively uneventful as far as these things go. I am particularly interested, though, in the effect of this travel on my children, and especially on their psychological/emotional/intellectual development. So I asked all my science sources, Wha

If your kids are anything like mine, they eat a lot, and so I find myself in the kitchen a lot. Invariably, they follow me in there (“Mommy, what are you doing? Mommy, can I see? Mommy mommy mommy mommy…”), and so I thought, what about setting up some science things for them to do in the kitchen? Here are my 10 favorite ones. Note: many of them may be messy. We like mess in my house, but you may want to put down extra plastic tablecloths/tarps before you begin. 1. Volcanoes:

The big news in our family is that as of Thanksgiving time, the youngest scientist-in-training is now toilet-trained, at just over 3 years. When I mentioned this fact to one of our relatives, the person responded with, “It’s about time.” Then I got curious, as I tend to, and decided to do some research about the average age of toilet training and how that may have changed over the years. If it turned out that children were toilet trained at a much younger age a few decades ag

Continuing in our installment of fun science activities to do with your kids this summer…. 1. Make your own play-dough. This is surprisingly easy to do and very cheap, which certainly helps when you are trying to entertain your kids on a budget. The key here is to use as much salt as the recipe calls for (don’t be tempted to skimp!) and to mix it really with your hands. Feel free to add all kinds of food coloring to the play-dough too. Your kids might try to eat it, if they a

It’s hot outside, again. You’ve been to the pool, and the beach, and the splash pad, and you’ve turned on your sprinklers more days that you can count. It’s still hot and the kids are still home from school and they still need things to do. How about trying some science projects? These fun science activities can be done using supplies that you most likely have at home or can get from the supermarket on your next grocery run: 1. Make your own slime or floam. Slime is great. It