Sci Fri: Pine Potions

A very talented friend gifted us with beautiful homemade and hand-packaged salves and remedies. 

We attempted our own potions for science this week with Pine & Peppermint Ache Salve.

http://foodcuration.org/recipes/peppermint-pine-headache-salve/
The peppermint and pine is a strong reminder of Christmas! Combined with the scent of melting beeswax, the house smelled amazing!

We've worked with beeswax before, so we have a mason jar of melt-worthy wax that only requires a boiling bath. We then added the remaining ingredients, stirred to blend and poured  the liquid into a recycled amber jar. It doubles as a nature science project as well as a chemistry lab (liquids-solids).

As a side, we melted plain beeswax for modeling, which the kids are obesessed with.

It's great to have a cup of tea while you work. You can keep your hands warm which aids in manueveuring the wax.

EXPAND ON POTIONS SPELLS AND MAGIC

HP. He's all the rage in our home these days.

Five Children and It. This is our first read by E Nesbit, whom I wrongly assumed was a man and was thrilled to find out E stands for Edith!!

Five children vacation in a summer home and find a sand pit nearby where a Sand Fairy has been residing for centuries. The crotchety fairy allows them one wish per day and the 'spell' breaks at sunset. Funny and clever and mischievious! What more could you ask for in chidlrens lit!?

"May he be brave, and have the strong head to think with, and the strong heart to love with and the strong hands to work with and the strong feet to travel with and always come safe home to his own."

~gipsy woman to 'Lamb'

"What are germans?"

"Little waggly things you can see with microscopes."

~brother and sister

"Why, don't you see, if you told grown-ups I should have no peace in my life. 

They'd get hold of me and they wouldn't wish silly things like you do, but real earnest things and the scientific people would hit on some way of making things last after sunset, as likely as not; and they'd ask for a graduated income-tax and old age pensions and manhood suffrage and free secondary education and dull things like that;..."

~The Sand Fairy to the children