Marshmallow Chick Experiment

When the Virtual Book Club featured Kevin Henkes we picked up a box set called A Box of Treats, and one of our favorite books in it was Owen’s Marshmallow Chick.  In the book Owen gets an Easter basket and eats all the treats until he gets to the Marshmallow Chick and realizes it’s the same color as he beloved blankies.  Instead of eating it, he puts it on his shelf at bedtime.

The boys really thought that Owen could just eat his chick in the morning, so we had to do an experiment to see what would happen to the chick if left on a shelf overnight!
Royal threw in a theory that the chick would disappear, so I thought we’d figure out ways to make that happen as well.

We ended up testing chicks in water, chicks in salt water, and a chick left on the shelf.  I kept one in a baggie so we could compare the chicks when all was said and done.

The water turned yellow pretty quickly and the chicks seemed to be getting soft and spongy.

Overnight, the chick on the shelf got pretty hard.  I was really glad we kept one in the baggie because the boys thought the shelf chick felt normal at first!

We left the chicks out for a few more days to see if we could get the ones in the water to “disappear” but they really didn’t.  They started to mold so we had to cut the experiment short.

The chick just sitting out got pretty hard in comparison to the chick in the bag.

This ended up being a great experiment.  We’ve had issues with little hands taking food out of the package and leaving it out, to be found later hard as a rock.  Now they understand a bit more why we keep food in bags!