So Kate’s friend Abby talks about volcanos all the time. We’ve had to “evacuate” the stuffed animals on more than one occasion. 🙂 I decided it was high time we made a kitchen volcano. A bit of quick googling netted me a recipe, though you could just as easily use vinegar and baking soda by themselves. We, of course, modified it as we went.
First up, we didn’t make the actual volcano. Who really has 2 cups of salt on hand anyway? We made our volcano out of repurposed shipping materials. Did I mention we have Amazon Prime? Yeah, we order everything. I used one of those starbucks bottles as the base and molded some packing paper around it.
Next we mixed up the water, baking soda, food coloring and dish soap. I poured it into the volcano with the help of a funnel. It was at this point that we ran into problems. I went to get the giant jug of vinegar and it wasn’t in the pantry. I checked the laundry room because I sometimes add it to a load of diapers, but it wasn’t there either. Hmm… Now we were in a pickle because Kate and Abby were expecting a volcano. I checked the pantry again. Well, we had some rice wine vinegar, surely that would work.
Abby got all excited but then we had this somewhat disappointing reaction.
I mean, technically it worked but it wasn’t very impressive. More of a slow ooze than a fiery volcano. Kate quickly demanded another project, so we did some stickers.
At about this point, Michael came out for lunch (he works from home) and decided that he was going to take a crack at the volcano construction. The girls were thrilled. He made a volcano out of old playdoh and filled it with baking soda.
At this point, he also went and found the regular vinegar. It was in the linin closet from the last time we cleaned the bathroom. Whoops.
He found an old baby advil syringe and used it to inject some food colored vinegar directly into the baking soda.
This was met with more approval, partly due to the fact that you could get several “eruptions” out of it by adding another syringe full of vinegar. Still, I think I might be picking up some mentos at the store next time I go. We can drop them in some diet coke and have some real fun. I might have to get some teeny tiny safety goggles first. 🙂