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Fizzling Out


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. 

1. Get a big bowl.  Preferably one you won’t eat out of again, but most of the ingredients are edible anyway (or soap/ glycerin) so you should be fine if you use the bowl again.  Leftover restaurant containers are great and that’s what we used.
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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