Baking Soda, Vinegar and Shaving Cream

 

After our Marbled Leaves fall craft, we were left with a baking dish full of brightly colored shaving cream. It looked way too promising to just wash it down the drain – we just HAD to turn it into another activity!

As you may know, we love the baking soda and vinegar reaction, so we decided to see how it was going to change in the presence of shaving cream. And wouldn’t you know it, the baking soda, vinegar and shaving cream reaction was AWESOME!

 

(E was 3 years and 11 months old.)

This post contains affiliate links for your convenience.

 

 

 

To make eruptions with baking soda, vinegar and shaving cream, you’ll need:

• Baking soda.
• Vinegar.
• Shaving cream.
• Liquid watercolors (optional).
• Eye dropper (optional).
• Spoon (optional).
• Bowl (optional).
• Baking dish or other container to catch the overflow.

 

 

 

This is what it looked like when we were done making our Marbled Leaves:

 

 

Do you see how we couldn’t bear to just wash it all away?

I asked E to pour the rest of the liquid watercolors into the baking dish

 

 

then gave her some baking soda that she sprinkled over the colored shaving cream.

 

 

When she was satisfied with the amount of baking soda, she used the eyedropper to pick up vinegar and drop it onto the baking soda. 

 

 

Pretty quickly, we were able to tell that the eruptions were different than usual, and E started using the spoon to make them even bigger.

 

 

 

Since she already had the spoon, she decided to spoon some baking soda into the bowl of vinegar – those eruptions were pretty cool, too!

 

 

And then, she dumped out the bowl into the baking dish!

 

 

She asked for more vinegar, and after she’d used her spoon for one spoonful, she asked if she could dump the vinegar. I said yes. And it was awesome!

 

 

As you can see, there was still an “un-erupted” corner, and E asked for another bowl of vinegar to dump in that corner. She loved it – and started poking at the bubbles with her finger 🙂

Here’s a video of her dumping the second bowl of vinegar:

 

{If you can’t see this video, watch it here!}

 

She started digging a bit deeper and found the cookie cutters that were still in there under all those bubbles!

 

 

 

She told me they needed to be washed, so I got her a bowl of water and she gave them a good rinse.

 

 

Of course, the bowl that had held the vinegar needed to be rinsed as well.

 

 

About three minutes after she’d dumped the second bowl of vinegar, most of the big bubbles were gone {partly helped along by her digging through the “sludge” to find the cookie cutters} but it was all still nice and bubble-y.

 

 

All those impressive bubbles reminded me of our Giant Soapy Eruptions last year, where we added dish soap to the baking soda. Given that that activity was over a year {and a pregnancy 😉 } ago, I can’t really say how both experiments compare. I’d say the shaving cream made bigger bubbles – but that might also have something to do with the containers we used each time… I have a feeling we’ll have to try a side-by-side comparison some time soon 🙂

 

 

 

Have you tried changing the baking soda and vinegar reaction by adding other substances? What happened? Leave a comment!

 

 

 

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