Exploring Chemical Reactions: Vinegar “Dropping”

Sometimes, you just need 10  minutes to catch your breath, answer a phone call, send an email, or get dinner started.   It never fails…when you need to do something without little ones under foot, that’s when they need you the most!   This quick, easy, & interesting activity will keep kids of all ages occupied for a while.   My 8 year old worked for about 30 minutes on this at the kitchen table!   The simple ingredients can be found in your kitchen:   baking soda, food coloring drops, & vinegar.     Using eye droppers or pipettes, however, creates a new way to play with this combination!   I personally like pipettes because they have a smaller hole & squirt less!     Spread the baking soda onto a plate.   I used about a cup…the thicker your “baking soda bed” is on the plate, the longer your child will get reactions as they squirt vinegar. Next, let your child drop food coloring all over the baking soda on the plate.   The more drops the better! Last, put a little vinegar in a cup & let them use the eye dropper to squirt vinegar on the plate!   Super fizzy colors bubble up from everywhere, and the more vinegar they add the prettier their creation becomes.   I suggest starting with a small cup of vinegar so that if your child dumps their cup onto the plate, you can still use more vinegar in the droppers and continue to get a chemical reaction.   Remember,   this combination makes BIG fizzy lava flows if you combine large amounts of vinegar with the baking soda, so I would suggest either doing this outside, or using a large cookie sheet under the plate in case your child decides to dump their cup of vinegar into the baking soda!   You can really impress your kid and tell them they’ve been experimenting with an acid & a base.   Show them on the vinegar bottle that it says “5% acid”…ask them which ingredient they think is the base.   Explain that when you mix and acid & a base together, a chemical reaction happens!