Fun sensory play: baking soda & vinegar
September 27, 2014Do you have any idea how much my three year old loves to get messy? She loves nothing more than to dig her hands into something sticky, slimy, moldable, crumbly, dough-y, powdery, etc. – you name it, she’s probably interested. And let’s face it! Who can blame her? I would play with playdough all day if I can. Frankly, it’s pretty calming- kneading the dough and stretching the dough and squeezing the dough.
Anyway, this post centers around the chemical reaction that occurs when you mix an acid (vinegar) with a base (baking soda). The combination of these two reactants produces a lovely sizzling sound, as my three year old likes to call it! 🙂 Oh and don’t forget the reaction also produces a bubbling effect, too. All the more fun!
Fun sensory play: baking soda & vinegar
Kids sensory play
I decided to start by adding about 1 inch of baking soda to a clear plastic shoe box. Then I filled a red squirt bottle with vinegar. First, I left the vinegar in its pure state. Next, I added a touch of red food coloring to produce “pink vinegar.” If you ask my daughters or me, pink anything is always better!
Baking soda and vinegar experiment
Sophia had so much fun playing with the reactants- individually and together. She loved squeezing the vinegar out of the bottle a lot! And kept going back for more vinegar, saying repeatedly that she “needed a lot more vinegar!”
Kids sensory science experiment
She also loved pushing all the baking soda to one side of the box and making a little mountain of the baking soda. And then she needed to squirt vinegar on top of that, too!
Kids science experiment / sensory activity
She thoroughly enjoyed this little project / science experiment. I explained to her the science behind it a bit (I’m a chemical engineer after all), and I will probably need to whip out these ingredients again later this week to do this all over again. She’s been requesting a repeat of this science experiment a few times already!
