Baking Soda and Coloured Vinegar Play & Kid's Co-op

I saw this idea on Pinterest, unfortunately the pin didn't lead anywhere, just a picture of a little boy playing with a tray of baking soda and dropping coloured vinegar onto it and the pin had a description under it. I just knew we had to try it though. :)

It is a very simple activity. Set out some baking soda in a thin layer on a tray or plate. Colour some vinegar with either food colouring or liquid water colours in little containers. And use some eye droppers, syringes or anything that would work to drop the vinegar onto the baking soda.

I dumped a box of baking soda onto one of our craft trays, used some food colouring to colour little containers of vinegar and gave the girls an eye dropper. I showed them what to do and let them go at it :)

It took Sammie a little bit of time and lots of showing her to figure out how to use the eye dropper. She kept squeezing it as it was in the vinegar and letting go as she took it out, which meant she wasn't getting anything in her dropper. I showed her how to do it and helped her squeeze and release the bulb at the right time.

Once Sammie figured out how to use the eye dropper, she loved it. She loved watching the baking soda fizz when she dropped some vinegar onto it. The colouring really made it easy to see the reaction.

I think Maddie was having almost as much fun as Sammie lol

They would drop different colours of vinegar on top of each other to see if the colours would mix as it reacted. Most of the time, it did. The girls also liked trying to see who could get the biggest fizzy reaction.

They used all of the first batch of coloured vinegar that I made, so I made them up some more. I think for the second batch, they didn't use the droppers, just dumped all the little containers onto the baking soda.

When they had coloured all the baking soda and it wouldn't react anymore, they started to play with the baking soda. lol It felt almost like goop or wet sand. They had a lot of fun squeezing it, making piles of it and just playing with the coloured baking soda.

One word of warning, if you let your children play with the baking soda after it has been coloured. Be prepared for really colourful hands. lol And because it was food colouring, we had a hard time getting the colouring off of their hands.

Playing with this kept the girls occupied for quite awhile and then playing with the baking soda afterwards kept them busy for longer. :) I think this activity will be requested a lot.

This is a great activity to get out when the kids are bored, very little set up and very little mess (as long as the vinegar doesn't get spilled) and it should keep them entertained for quite awhile. :)


The only change that I would make, would be to put less food colouring or water colours into the vinegar, maybe used bigger containers and add more vinegar and less colouring. And also maybe give the girls their own tray of baking soda.


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Now it's time for this week's Kid's Co-op. :) I hope you will link up your kid related post or check out some of these great ideas :) You'll find lots of great ideas of things to do with your kids :)