Volcano Islands

There must be something about baking soda and vinegar that makes me want to blog.
J loves volcanoes.  He wants to go to Hawaii to see a volcano.  Sounds like a fabulous field trip to me.
Disclaimer: I did see this on Pinterest.  Winner!  This was really fun.  J was into it for about an hour… enough time for me to hang out with him, prep dinner, and do the dishes.  All you need is baking soda, vinegar, food coloring, a baking dish and an eye dropper.  The eye dropper was great for his fine motor skills, too. 
    

After a while, J decided we should mix all the colors together.  He had been combining some of his islands to see what colors they made (which gave me a great idea: just use primary colors to see how they can be combined to get other colors).

And the dropper just wasn’t big enough anymore, so he poured.

The volcano lagoon!  Then we started all over again.  Good times!

Erupting with Fun

 

J really liked making spooky potions.  This is another way to modify the activity.  We used Play Dough, but there are a million ways to make a volcano.  Any I bet you have play dough on hand…

PS.  Be prepared to toss the play dough after the eruption.  It was gooey.

We started with a cup of baking soda.  I used an old applesauce up because I wanted to be able to toss this when we finished.  I also attempted to protect our little table from a huge mess by placing our cup on a piece of cardboard (from a diaper box), but it didn’t make that big of a difference.

J added his red food coloring.  We discussed lava, and I showed him a clip of a volcano erupting from YouTube.  Just make sure it won’t scare your little scientist… 

We built our volcano around our cup of baking soda.  J squirted the vinegar into the volcano, and boom!  We had our eruption.  You can always add more baking soda to prolong the volcano’s life.

    

Here’s our sticky volcano after our experiment!  Good times.

Spooky Potions

 

Since it is “Halloween-time,” as J calls it, we made spooky potions.  Spooky potions are so fun, and so easy!  All you need is Baking Soda and Vinegar (just plain, white vinegar).  We added some neon food colorings to make it Halloweeney.

  1.  Start with baking soda in a small, clear container.  I used my favorite mini prep bowls from Pampered Chef, but anything will work. 

2.  Add a few drops of whatever food coloring you want into the baking soda.

3.  Pour in the vinegar.  It will fizz and foam.  I found the squeeze bottles at Walmart, and I like them because it contains the mess.  But, you can just pour from a cup or whatever pleases your little scientist!

W was not that into it.  So J took over W’s spooky potion. 

    

We had so much fun, we did it again!

A few ways to modify:

To Simplify: Do it all yourself in front of your scientist. 

To Extend: Make other spooky potions, but mix your own colors.  Talk about what primary colors you can mix to get “spooky” new colors.  We mixed yellow and red to get orange.

Batman and the Purple Peacock

I wish I could think of some crafty way to open up this blog, but alas... the words just aren't coming.  With some nudging from good friends and family, I'm going to re-attempt blogging.  Wish me luck!

Just a little info on us:  Two special little boys call me "mommy."  J, my oldest, is now 4 (however he was 3 in the first two posts).  W is 2, going on 3 in July.  J loves superheros, volcanoes, maps, books, the color orange, and his friends and family.  W loves trucks, rocks, peacocks (he was one for Halloween), purple, stop signs, and butterflies.  These lists are subject to change at any given moment!  I am their mom, a former teacher.  I love to read, run and craft.  I sometimes like to cook, and sometimes the dos and don'ts of food scare me.  The boys have the best Daddy around and I have the best hubby you'll ever meet. 

xo