Charlie and I had a lot of quality time together while he was home sick the past week. It was the perfect opportunity to try this little project involving baking soda and vinegar that I recently pinned. I regularly use baking soda + vinegar to keep my sink drains nice and clear, so I knew Charlie would love the fun reaction created when these two ingredients are combined. Best of all, these ingredients are safe, so even younger toddlers can participate!

You will need:

baking soda
vinegar
food coloring
small bowls
medicine droppers
baking sheet

Fill a couple of small bowls with some vinegar and add food coloring. I decided to start with just red, yellow, and blue. Then cover a baking sheet with baking soda. This can get a little messy, so I put some black posterboard under the baking sheet.

I showed Charlie how to get some colored vinegar into his medicine dropper and then put it on the baking soda, and he was off!

He loved seeing the little mini volcanos that erupted whenever he squeezed some vinegar onto the baking soda.

But then he touched the baking soda with the tip of the medicine dropper, and when he put the medicine dropper back into the vinegar, he got this reaction:

He was no fool and completely lost interest in dropping the vinegar onto the baking soda, and started putting the baking soda into the bowls of vinegar! He realized that the more baking soda there was, the bigger the reaction, so he asked me for a spoon. The medicine droppers were not going to cut it.

It’s a volcano!

Charlie kept adding more and more baking soda to the vinegar bowls until there was so much baking soda in them, the reaction stopped occuring. At that point we gave him some new bowls of vinegar!

We had so much fun with this activity, we’re definitely going to do it again. It’s a super easy activity that anyone from the youngest toddlers to school aged children can enjoy!