Easy Baking Soda Volcano

It is amazing how entertaining a little bit of baking soda and vinegar can be for the kids. Matt came home from school today and told us about learning about lava flow. So, we decided to make a volcano and add another visual to what he learned today. 

The kids are very impatient when it comes to waiting for reactions to take place, so we didn't have time to make a volcano that had to dry. 

We mixed 2 cups of baking soda with about 6 Tablespoons of water. We stirred it together in a bowl. The kids just played with the mixture for a little while. It reminded us of snow. 

Then we formed a little volcano on a baking pan. I pushed a hole about 3/4 of the way down the middle of the volcano. 

We were going to wait a couple of hours until it dried a little bit, but I think we only made it 20-30 minutes. The kids used eye droppers to put a little diluted red food coloring on the outside of the volcano. Then we added about 1/4-1/2 tsp of dish soap to the hole of the volcano. 

The kids each had an eye dropper. They took turns squirting vinegar in the the volcano hole. We let it settle a couple of times and observed the outside of the structure. We talked about the effect lava has as it flows over the surface as well. We were able to get quite a few reactions out of this volcano. Then, because we have to make a mess with everything we do, the kids added other ingredients to the pan and created their own "soup".