Summer Fun # 5 ~ Science and Art Project

Trying to entertain two boys without relying too much on television and technology has been a challenge.  I decided to try this little "science" experiment from Pinterest with them one morning.  I gave Evan a little lesson on acids and bases and how they react together and then let him see for himself.  Basically, you just put some food coloring in vinegar and then use droppers to put the vinegar into the baking soda and create colorful fizzy art.  Unfortunately, I only had enough baking soda for one dish so they had to share.  I will have to let them do this again one day because they really had a lot of fun.

They used medicine droppers to drop in the vinegar.  

Starting to look like a colorful piece of art already.

Making green fizz.

Someone got a little happy with the red.  After this, Evan decided to pretend the green and blue was earth and water, and the red was volcano lava that was spreading.  Reminds me of how he used to re-enact volcano eruptions in his sandbox with the dinosaurs. 

Brody the volcano adds more lava.

My little scientists hard at work.

Evan tries to put out the fires of the lava with some blue water.

Eventually, we just added all the vinegar and watched the last of the baking soda dissolve into fizz.  I guess this is what land looks like after the volcano turns everything to black volcanic ash still steaming with heat. 

We also discovered it makes some pretty noxious gaseous fumes.  Ha!

So have you tried any interesting science or art projects with your kids that you could recommend to us?