The Gullywasher

We had another fun and informative class yesterday with our Five In A Row co-op.  The book we are studying is The Gullywasher by Joyce Rossi.  In it, Grandfather tells his granddaughter, Leticia, about the biggest gullywasher ever, which changed him from a strong young vaquero into the old grandfather that he is now.

After listening to the story, the children gathered around a long table to learn about various fats and how they mix, or don’t mix, with water.  Some fats are lighter than others, fats melt at different temperatures, and different fats separate from water at different speeds.

Jars containing colored water and different kinds of fats were passed around, shaken and then observed.

Michaela shakes a jar while the student next to her gets his watch ready.  The children timed how long it took for two different fats to separate from the water they were shaken into.

Next, the children were shown a variety of watercolor-painting techniques.  One lesson was how they could draw something with a light-colored crayon and then paint over it and the crayon marks would not absorb the paint but, rather, separate.  (More lessons about fat!).  See the yellow lightning strikes? 

Each child was given three heavy cards with their envelopes to make watercolor paintings, turning this into an opportunity to make cards for grandparents or other friends or relatives.  The children practiced what they were just taught by Mrs. Laura.

The next part of the class was a pepper-eating contest!  Oh my!  Mrs. Laura passed around jars of dried peppers and let the children smell them.  She then explained about Scoville units and how they measure the hotness, or the amount of capsaicin, in different types of peppers.

Mrs. Laura read the names of the peppers on her chart and the children raised their hands when they had heard of a particular type of pepper before.  You’d have to know the pretty and lively Mrs. Laura to know how connected she kept the kids through all of this!

As an aside, in the next picture, the beautiful dark-haired lady in the back was our other teacher for the day, Mrs. Lea.  She read The Gullywasher and another related story to the children.  The set-up for this was awesome.  The room was darkened so I don’t have a picture of her reading, but just wanted to include her.

Each child had a chance to taste some peppers mixed in with a cheese base, starting at a level of 1 and moving to a level 10.  We have some young students, so this was a mild level 10!  Still, it was hot enough to bring tears to a couple of eyes. 

Now the “fat” lesson comes in.  Is water what you need to drink after eating hot peppers to take away the burn?  No!  Water will not wash that capsaicin away because it is not water soluble.  What you need is dairy fat, so the children had yogurt after the pepper tasting. 

Tasting!

No we did not put the children into cages at the end of the co-op.  The children ran outside to play for a few minutes after the class was done.  This just happened to be a fun structure for the children to climb under and pretend they were in a cage!

It was such a nice day.  As for me, getting a chance to get out of the house and chat with some other moms and children is worth as much as having Michaela learn from these intelligent moms. 

Have a wonderful Friday!  The rain has let up here and I’m about to put on some water for tea.  Maybe some birds will visit my window feeder to keep me company while I type today.