Abby got some Elmo bath fizzies from one of her friends for
her birthday and it has been a huge hit at our house. I figure, what better time to sneak in some chemistry
learning.
Today we are making our own bath fizzies and working on some
new scientific vocabulary (pipette, test tube, dissolve, and dilute).
MAKING BATH FIZZIES
First we make bath fizzies. As a back-up, I make sure that we have some extra bath
fizzies around so that I can switch them as we wait 24 hours for ours to set up
if it looks like they won’t set up.
I explain to the kids that bath fizzies are made up of a
weak acid like citric acid in lemons and sodium bicarbonate like in baking
soda. Yes, I did tell the kids
that. I get asked all of the time
if I really tell the kids the background info. I do. You never
know what they’ll remember. Then I
simplify, usually with something that they can visualize – today I told them
that if they took some lemon juice and dropped it on some on baking soda and
rolled it in their hands into a ball, they’d pretty much have a bath
fizzy.
“No” Briana tells me.
“You need to have some color in it. Not just white and yellow.”
You’re right.
We need to add color and a little bit of soap and we’re going to add
some scents to make them smell good.
Then we’ll add some cornstarch to make it thicker like we do with soup
and we’ll be all done. Sound fun?
It does.
Making bath fizzies really is that simple.
2. Add 1 cup baking soda
½ cup cornstarch
½ cup citric acid (if you can’t
find it, use ¼ cup of cream of tartar – today I used the cream of tartar)
2 tbsp of glycerin (optional – we
made one batch with and one with just water)
2 tsp fragrant essential oils (we
used apple and lemon)
Couple of drops of food coloring
3.
Mix until it gets just barely sticky. If it doesn’t get sticky, add water or
witch hazel, preferably by spraying it, a tiny bit at a time until it gets
sticky.
4.
Use your hands to mold the mixture into a ball. Make sure the ball is really tightly
packed together.
5.
Leave the balls on wax paper over night to set
up.
6.
If you want the bath fizzies to last longer or
look nicer with a smoother, stronger outside, mist them with witch hazel.
That’s it. And
they charge $5 per ball at least at Bath and Body Works! J
The kids had so much fun making them that they wanted to
make another batch. I didn’t have
any more glycerin, so we made the second batch just using water. In the making, the water worked a bit
better (ie tackier faster) although of course they fizzed a little which was
exciting for the kids anyway (we’ll see tomorrow if they still fizz). Just be careful not to add too much
water. Spray until the mixture is
wet enough to form balls and then stop.
You can always add more.
It is hard to manage the kiddies and take pictures since the
fizzy making needs to happen relatively quickly, but here are a couple for you:
Abby loved to spray the witch hazel:
Bree’s first finished bath fizzy:
The first batch (halfway through the kids decided that they
wanted them darker pink):
If you want them to look round and pretty, use a mold, or
just spend a little more time on them than we did. You can get them that way…just not with toddlers…unless
yours have more patience with the aesthetics than mine do.
Then, since they won’t get to see the fruit of their labor
until tomorrow, I planned to get out the mini fizzies from a science kit that
Abby also got for her birthday (Abby has awesome gift giving friends!).
If you can’t wait to see what happens with the ones we made…you’re
just like my kids who took their waters (for drinking) and dumped them into
about half of the second batch.
It fizzed with a nice little sound and effectively dyed the
water a pretty pink.
Then we had a massive clean-up!
Another day this week
–
We get out the fizzies from the science kit.
I explain that these fizzies are just like the ones that we
made. When the mixture touches the
water it dissolves and makes fizz and
the carbon dioxide bubbles out all over us. “Ew! “ Sounds
yucky…to the kids…feels great when you’re in the tub.
So what’s going to happen when we drop our fizzies into the
water? They will dissolve and make
the water change color. Good.
(They’ve been playing with those fizzies all week so they knew that by now.)
I tell them that we are going to drop the fizzies into the
water in our test tubes and observe
what happens. The anticipation is
killing them.
We watch the fizzies dissolve
in the test tubes and we talk about
what’s happening.
The magnifying glasses were the kids’ idea…and each of us
gets a magnifying glass that matched our initial solution’s color (Abby’s is
blue and mine is yellow).
Then I get out pipettes
and tell the kids what they are called.
I tell them that we are going to make new colors by using the pipettes to take a little bit of red,
blue, or yellow and mix them in our cups.
The kids both surprisingly (for Abby for sure) already know that red and
blue make purple, red and yellow make orange, etc. They even knew that all mixed together made black. Knowing what would happen didn’t stop
the enthusiasm that was bubbling over in the slightest. I think that playing with the pipettes
helped.
We work on pushing hard to let the fluid pour out of the
pipette and pushing softly and in control to make the fluid come out drop by
drop.
Then we play with mixing the colors.
When everyone has a cup of black water and we are running
low on water in the test tubes. I
ask the kids what would happen if I wanted to make more and we had no
fizzies. No one understood what I
was asking. I asked it a different
way, what would happen if I just added more water to the test tubes?
Briana knew.
“My red would turn lighter and lighter until it looks like pink.”
Yep. I tell the
kids that when you add water and nothing else it is called diluting. When you dilute the color it gets lighter. We try it out and everyone is happy
with a new set of pastel colors.
We mix some more until we end up with cups of black water again. The we dilute some more and play again and again until we have test tubes of practically clear water.
Then it was bath time and the kids happily climbed into the
tub with their packets of Elmo bath fizzies from Abby’s friend. I can’t do bath time fun pictures anymore
since the kids are getting a little bit too old for me to post those on the
internet, but trust me it was da bomb
(get it? Bath bomb is another phrase for bath fizzy…you know you love the
puns!).
I asked the kids what they thought the fizzies were made of
and no one remembered. Oh
well. I prompted. The weak acid from lemons…Citric acid
and … “Something white from the
shelf.” Baking… “Baking soda”. I’m counting it. “And spray!” Abby added her favorite
part. I reminded them of how we
made our bath fizzies again. Every
time you refresh the memory, they remember a little bit more.
Such fun, albeit messy, afternoons! Hopefully we can do it again if the
kids aren’t all fizzled out on fizzies.
*Next week I have my first guest poster…so stay tuned!
<3 Pedigreed Housewife
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