Colorful Mini Eruptions

To begin, if anyone knows the original source for this pin, do let me know, as it was the inspiration for an activity we did this afternoon.

We started with a pie pan filled with baking soda (actually, two of them, as I figured Meg would want to do this a few times - I was correct!), some small containers filled with vinegar tinted with food coloring (liquid watercolor would work, too), and a medicine dropper (these eyedroppers/pipettes will soon be on their way to our house, but the medicine dropper worked really well).

I only had to show Margaret a couple times the squeeze, dip, let go, and squeeze technique and she was off! She kept chanting the steps to herself as she did the activity.

She used a squeeze of each color in the first pan and made a lovely rainbow of miniature eruptions.

Colored baking soda with the excess vinegar dumped out.

In the second tray, she seemed to prefer using up each color before moving on to the next.

The blue and green looked quite pretty, like ocean water against the white baking soda "sand."

The addition of the red vinegar made things a bit murky.

And the yellow finished the whole thing off with some of that good old "preschool brown" we all know and love.

I didn't use much baking soda, maybe 1/2", and I could have used less. The activity lasted a good half hour, and there was more "eruption power" left in the baking soda, but Meg decided to dump the remaining tinted vinegar into the pan to see a BIG eruption.