If you are parents of young like us, you are constantly looking for things to do with your kids to keep them entertained. If your child is like our kid then they have thousands of questions everyday. They are always wanting to look and watch and touch the next item. So how can you as a parent feed their curiosity? One way we have found is to do different crafts and experiments with them. The first craft we did with our kid was a clay volcano eruption and you can do this simple craft with your own child as well. Follow along with us in showing you how easy it is to have some fun experiences with your own child.
First is what is needed to do the volcano.
Supply List
- Distilled White Vinegar
- Baking Soda
- Yellow Food Coloring
- Red Food Coloring
- Cup
- Spoon
- Baking Sheet
- Crayola Model Magic-We used this but air dry clay would work as well. We bought this Crayola brand at Family Dollar.
A simple run to the store and everything needed should be easily purchased. Our daughter wanted an orange eruption so we used both the yellow and red food coloring. Any food coloring would work. Mix and match to create different colored reactions. After the supplies are bought, a tiny amount of prep work needs to be completed.
The first thing we did was used the Crayola Model Clay and make a volcano. It took a little bit of work to form it into this shape but with a little bit of effort it is easily done. Make sure to create a spout down about halfway into the volcano. This area is where the baking soda will be loaded. After the volcano was formed, we set it aside for a couple of days to let the clay dry and harden. If you are using the Crayola Modeling Clay like us, the vinegar will soften the clay back and potentially collapse the volcano if the clay has not harden enough. After a couple of days we were ready for the eruption.
First load the volcano with the baking soda. One spoonful of baking soda needs to be poured into the volcano. Next mix about a 1/4 cup of vinegar with the food coloring of your choice. We used a couple drops of both the yellow and red food coloring to get this orange color above. After a quick stir to get the color just right then it is time for the reaction. We used a baking sheet to catch all of the overflow of vinegar during the reaction. The baking sheet helped the cleanup process after we were finished.
With the baking soda in the volcano, pour the mixture of vinegar and food coloring into the spout of the volcano. Once the vinegar hits the baking soda then the reaction occurs and you have your volcanic eruption. As you can see above the orange color came through with a real nice color at the end. As you can see in the above right picture, we were able to get a lot of bubbles coming out of the volcano. After the first reaction, our daughter enjoyed it so we were able to load some more baking soda, mix some food coloring with vinegar, pour and watch another eruption. We did about 4 or 5 different pours altogether. As we finished the last one, the modeling clay was starting to soften and collapse so we stopped. All in all it was a quick and easy craft to do with our daughter.