Cleaning Pennies

After thoroughly inspecting pennies with magnifying glasses, we talked about all the new vocabulary words we learned.  Ask your child: who is on the penny, how is the person posed (in a profile), to give another word for liberty, what is the penny made of, what building is on the back of the penny, what is the tiny figure between the columns and is it tiny in reality, what do the latin words mean on the penny, what four words are above the building, how much is a penny worth, and what is the word we used to describe when the penny was made and what does it mean when something is tarnished?  That definitely is a lot of information about the little penny. 

The children were so excited to take part in a science experiment.  Everybody brought ten not so new and not so shiny pennies to school.  Miss Kathy and I poured vinegar and a fair amount of salt into a small styrofoam container for each child.  The little scientists put the pennies in for a soak while we once again reviewed our penny knowledge.  After five minutes, the students pulled one penny out at a time to clean with a clean rag.  Immediately, the children could see the tarnish come off of the coin.  Hopefully, you heard all about this last night.  Several of the children came in this morning and said they'd repeated the experiment at home last night or taken Miss Faith's advice and tried doing the same thing with ketchup.  It is fun to be in kindergarten!