Chasing Cheerios

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Shining Pennies

O and I shined pennies this morning. It was fun, quick, easy, and educational! If you do this activity with a child under age 3, please be very careful since pennies are choking hazards for kids who still put thing in their mouths. First, we mixed a 1/2 cup of white vinegar and a tablespoon of salt and stirred it up. O usually holds the measuring apparatus while I pour in the ingredients, then she pours them into the bowl.
Dropping the pennies into the vinegar and salt mixture.
Drying the pennies and admiring their shininess.
Here are our clean and shiny pennies! They actually don't look that great in the picture, but they are MUCH prettier than they were before we started. We also dropped a few quarters, nickels, and dimes into the mixture and talked about how the chemical reaction that cleans them only works with copper. That's probably over the head of a 2 year old, but I thought it was good to expose her to new information :)

5 comments:

  1. I was looking at my son's piggy bank this morning thinking I would do this with him this week.

    Great minds think a like!

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  2. I love O's tongue sticking out. My daughter does the same thing when she is really concentrating on a project!

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  3. Such a great idea!!

    BTW...I nominated you for a blog award. See my blog for details!

    :)

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  4. Cool idea! My daughter asked if she could give her money a bath in the sink the other day but this is much better!

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  5. Oh yeah! We did this several months ago after reading the idea in The Preschooler's Busy Book. My kids really enjoyed it. We used soap first and they loved just playing with the bubbles, as well.

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