SHHHH. . . It's a Secret

So one day Pumpkin gets in my car after school and says, "I found something in a book at school today I want to do at home." We encourage learning at home so I asked her to tell me what she wanted to do. She tells me she wants to write a secret message on paper and make it show up. This sounds awesome. I however am not the scientist of the family. I am the last person you want messing with this stuff. How in the world I got through biology I have no idea (no really I do my partner and I made crude jokes while dissecting our animals because really science is not my thing.)

Pumpkin begins to explain what she read in the book to me.

"We need to get a lemon and squeeze it. Then we take the juice and a stick with the balls on the end and write on the paper. Then we take salt and rub it on the paper. Then we dump the salt in the garbage. And  then we get a black crayon and we rub it on the paper and the words show up. That is what it said in the book. Can we do this mom, can we?"

Well darn, she is so cute asking for this. I really can't say no to her, I'm such a sucker so I say,
"Why don't you tell your dad about this idea and see what he says. Dad loves science experiments and is much better at this stuff than mommy."

Just like any good mother right? Well this sort of fell through the cracks for a few weeks, then one day while shopping (while dad happened to be along), Pumpkin reminds of this and we NEED a lemon. So we buy a lemon and dad goes home and hits the internet. He loves the idea but thinks it can be simpler than what she is describing.

So a week goes by and we finally set aside a time to do this. Of course it is a family affair. The two middle children see what is going on so they decide they want in on the fun.

First thing was to cut the lemon in half and squeeze it. Now Daddy cut the lemon but we did encourage her to squeeze the lemon herself. Even though we had small people present we were very careful to not allow them access to the sharp object and it got put away quickly.

Now that we have a cut, squeezed lemon, what do you do with it? Well you eat it of course (or at least let the little people present do so.) Too sour.

 The next step was to write on our papers. Yes EVERYONE got a chance to do just this. We made this a family project and every kid enjoyed every step. Pumpkin loves to draw so this was a dream for her. The other two are still learning but since it was something with Daddy, Bubba and Lizard had fun.

Now we had to wait for the lemon juice to dry on the paper. Now we used a hair dryer on cold to do some of the drying, We blew on the paper and we waved it around. See we did not want to wait (although maybe we should have, our kids are young and waiting is just too much.)

Just had to test those lemons again.

Hey Daddy don't forget I'm here.

So now that we did this, remember how my husband did some research to see how to do this? Well guess what he still decided to wing it. He went with the hair dryer on hot. Thinking that since it is supposed to heat that will make the message show this would work. I am going to tell you, it doesn't.

So then I ask, well what did your research tell you? He says it told him to use a light bulb. Okay GREAT let's do that. Oh yeah we have mainly CFLs in the house, those do NOT put out heat, so this didn't work. And the ones that do get hot take a little bit to get warm and are way over our heads.

So on went the thinking cap. Just as we were about to totally give up, Mommy suggested using the stove top. I mean it needed heat to show the message right? She could see Daddy doubting this idea (no kids were allowed to help with this part of the process for the safety of little fingers.)

As you can see I ended up with some proud kiddos. They all had fun, and I think even daddy would try this one out again. (Now I won't swear to this but I think you could put the papers on a cookie tray and bake in the oven at like 200 for 5 mins and this would work too.)