Shiny Pennies

We have a "piggy bank" of pennies that get used frequently.  Not a pig...but a huge baby bottle bank.  :-)  At the toddler and young preschool age, they love to sit there with a bowl of pennies and slip them in the top of the bank.  Great fine motor!  The older kids sort, skip count, stack, use them in their play (they love to haul pennies in the trucks), and so on.

My older kiddos decided they wanted to sort and clean them this past weekend.  Well, we've tried this before and did not have luck.  We only made them worse as many of them have this white coating on them from the last time we tried this.  :-) 

This time we had a bit more luck...it really kept them interested because they could see an instant change in the pennies.  The picture below is actually less than a minute in the mixture.  I'm sure it would have gotten shinier but they wanted to get a picture of it like that.  Unfortunately, the picture doesn't show the contrast as much as it does in person.

The lovely smelling mixture is...

3Tbs of vinegar to 2 tsp of salt

We ended up doing quite a bit more, using this ratio, to fill a tray and do more pennies than what would fit in a cup.  Made it easier to watch the instant change also!

So what's up here at Play 'n' Learn?  We are officially on summer break!  And we are looking forward to a change for the fall.  Though I'm not sure we are going to be placed at MVCA, which is our first choice (there wasn't many seats available and there were a LOT of application this year), I feel that we will continue this thought of homeschooling in the fall.  Quite a bit of excitement there!  Stay tuned!  :-)