First have fun decorating the volcano (don’t worry that part’s quick). Then add in the magic ingredients and wait for the sound of fizzing…
Watch their faces as they see their volcano erupt and shoot lava out of the top and down the sides! It’s much easier to do than you would think, and it’s a great activity to enjoy as a family.
Summary:
Time: 15 minutes
Age: Little kids to Tweens
Difficulty: Easy peasy
Skill: Mixing 2 ingredients to get a chemical reaction
You will need:
For the volcano:
- An empty bottle
- Sheets of brown foam
- A tray (a shoe box lid works fine)
- Glue gun or strong glue
- Moss and dinosaurs to decorate (optional)
For the eruption:
- Bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)
- Vinegar
- Warm water
- Red food colouring
Step 1: Wrap the bottle
Wrap one sheet of brown foam around your bottle.
Glue the edges down neatly round the rim and then roll the rest of the sheet into a cone as you stick it round your bottle. You can buy sheets of foam cheaply from craft shops or online.
You can find Foamie brown foam sheet on Amazon: https://amzn.to/2p2Amkr
Step 2: Make your volcano
Glue a second sheet around the bottle, to fill in any gaps. You should now have made a brown cone around your bottle, as shown in the photo.
Trim any excess foam off the bottom to make it flat.
Step 3: Decorate your volcano
Place your volcano on a tray or shoe box lid to contain the exploding ‘laval’. Now you can have fun decorating the scene by adding moss, leaves and even plastic dinosaurs.
Your volcano is ready but it’s dormant right now. Time to create the explosion.
Step 4: Add some bicarbonate of soda
Make a little funnel out of card and put 3-4 teaspoons of bicarbonate of soda in the bottle.
Step 5: Add water
Now pour in a glass of warm water mixed with red food colouring.
You can either use a jug or a measuring cup with a pourer to pour the water into your bottle.
Step 6: Now it’s time to make your volcano erupt
Now for the really exciting bit. The last ingredient you need to pour into your bottle is vinegar.
This is the magic ingredient that reacts with the bicarbonate of soda to create the ‘explosion’.
Pour some in and then sit back and wait for your volcano to erupt.
The ‘lava’ will shoot out of the top and pour down the sides. You can keep adding bicarbonate of soda and vinegar to watch your volcano erupt again and again.
After you have poured in the vinegar, if you listen carefully you will hear a fizzing sound. Wait a minute or two and the ‘lava’ will rise up the bottle and erupt out of the top.
Soon the lava will begin to run down the sides of your volcano.
Keep watching to see how much lava comes out. You can add more bicarbonate of soda and more vinegar to make it erupt again.
This is such an exciting science experiment that kids will love!
