This post was contributed by Sarah of Little Bins For Little Hands.
How About Some Christmas Themed Science Fun?!
Liam loves science sensory play, especially with baking soda and vinegar. Who can blame him! I also enjoy the fizzy eruptions and the colored bubbles. Each time he drops some vinegar on top of the baking soda, it’s so much fun to see what will happen! This is a simple preschool science experiment with simple materials and ingredients you already have on hand or are easy and inexpensive to find! Be prepared to have a lot of vinegar and baking soda ready for this Christmas science experiment. They will be asking for more and more! Liam did!
A Fizzing Christmas Science Experiment with Baking Soda & Vinegar
Supplies:
- cookie sheets
- holiday cookie cutters
- baking soda
- white vinegar
- food coloring
- glitter
- eye droppers
- ladle or spoon
- You could also do this inside a clear plastic bin for easy clean up.
This is a very simple set up. I used my dollar store cookie sheets and placed as many holiday or Christmas themed cookie cutters I could find on top of them. It does not matter if they are metal or plastic. We both worked to fill each cookie cutter with baking soda. You don’t need a lot. Liam only had one goal, spooning as much as he could into his cookie cutters! Once we were done filling the cookie cutters, I let him sprinkle green glitter into each one to make the fizzy eruptions a little sparkly for our Christmas science fun!
To make the eruptions happen, you need vinegar. I colored mine green and set out a bowl for him to use. I included eye dropper and a mini ladle. I always save the eye dropper from medicines and they work perfectly! They are particularly easy to use. He’s an old pro at this type of play and knows what he needs to do with the eye dropper! I love the fine motor skills included in using the vinegar. Plus he works hard since he loves the eruptions the vinegar makes when it comes in contact with the baking soda.
He worked his way through each cookie cutter, having so much fun! He used the different eye droppers and the ladle. I refilled the vinegar and green food coloring several times as the play spread to the tray. I also let him do one grand dump of vinegar onto baking soda for the shear excitement of all the fizziness! By the end, he enjoyed filling the tray with the green vinegar and the glitter. Yes, we sprinkled more glitter for fun, and yes, there was glitter everywhere! This Christmas science experiment ended up being an awesome sensory play activity too!
I always love how Sarah’s activities use materials that we all have right around the house. This Christmas science experiment is so quick to throw together but packed with fun and learning. Thanks for another great idea, Sarah!
Debs says
This looks like a super fun idea! Thanks for linking it to Tuesday Tots. I’m featuring it tomorrow 🙂
Krissy @ B-Inspired Mama says
I know – I love Sarah’s fizzy fun ideas! Thanks for featuring. 🙂
Barbara Allisen says
What a super idea! I have a whole collection of cookie cutters. We could do this with red, green, and no color to see if there’s a difference too.
Krissy @ B-Inspired Mama says
Oh – great idea! Let me know how it went.
Beth says
What a CLEVER idea!!! I love adding Science to my littles play!!
Thanks for sharing your creativity with us at TGIF. I featured it today here – http://www.123homeschool4me.com/2013/12/tgif-linky-party-105.html.
I hope to see you linked up again later today. Have a GREAT weekend,
Beth =-)
Monica says
So FUN! Pinned and am Featuring at Family Fun Friday!
Monica
http://www.happyandblessedhome.com
Natalie says
I love this simple addition of Christmas cookie cutter to the experiment – it makes it so much more Christmassy. Thanks for sharing with Afterschool!
Katie @ Happilyevermom says
This is such a creative way to revisit and to explore the baking soda and vinegar experiment. I love this idea and I can’t wait to try it out at home!