The other day Sunnyboy was counting his money (by counting the number of coins in his moneybox) and showed me an old and dirty penny. We decided to clean some of the coins. We'd used up all the vinegar in the house last week making volcanoes, so for this we used lemon juice and salt. We mixed one tablespoon of lemon juice with one teaspoon of salt in a little jar. We put some coins in and left them to soak. Later we took them out and polished them with a cloth. When we have some more vinegar we'll try it with vinegar and salt, and we'll also try it with coca-cola.
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I'm curious to hear your results! We tried coins in vinegar, and in olive oil last week!
ReplyDeleteMaryAnne, my camera isn't good enough to take close ups of coins but they were a little cleaner and, with a polish, shinier. Wasn't the most amazing of results though, so that's why we thought we'd try it again with using vinegar and coca-cola! I hadn't thought of olive oil so we'll try that too! Thanks :)
ReplyDeleteOh and a couple of the pennies were left in the lemon juice and salt accidently for a couple of days and they went rather pink!
ReplyDeleteMy son has an aversion to touching money, this sounds like a way to help him get over it, and plus I like shiny coins :-)
ReplyDeleteTechno-mole, we'd watched some YouTube "cleaning coins" videos first and seen people holding the coins with tweezers, so Sunnyboy insisted on using tweezers to put the coins in the jar and take them out. Your son may like the tweezer method! :)
ReplyDeleteThanks for linking up!
ReplyDeleteAnd it sounds as if we should try cleaning our pennies in lemon juice and salt!
Yay, we have to try this. Fortunately we have a big jar full of coins, plenty of pennies there. And Rockey Boy loves anything that sounds like a science experiment or involves mixing ingredients. So we'll try a Cola and vinegar + salt and will try polishing with some oil as well. Thank you for the idea!
ReplyDeleteOooh I another great idea - great way to teach science... next time you should get the silver out too and complete a household chore whilst you are at it!
ReplyDeleteThank you for linking up to Kids Get Crafty - much appreciated!
Maggy
nice idea, check out the counting activity crafts I did recently -
ReplyDeletehttp://blog.memetales.com/2011/03/counting-activities-kids-craft/
My kids would love cleaning coins! Thank you for the idea.
ReplyDeleteC:)
How did the coke go?
ReplyDeleteWe never did get any coke to try it with! Must do that soon. :)
DeleteThis should be a fun use for the pennies that are being discontinued here in Canada! We'll shine them and save them for posterity!
ReplyDelete