Rainbow Volcano

While talking about rainbows during our weather unit, Baby Bear and I had a little science fun. We did the traditional baking soda and vinegar experiment but with a little twist. I poured the vinegar into four different containers and added a drop of food coloring to each container. Then, I set out the colorful vinegars, a tray of baking soda, and an eye dropper in front of Baby Bear. I showed him how to use the dropper to transfer the vinegar to the baking soda tray so we could watch it bubble up in different colors. As he poured the vinegar little by little into the tray, the colors began to mix and make new colors. This gave us a chance to talk about how colors mix to make new colors (he was already somewhat familiar to this concept thanks to his Blues Clues DVD, so it wasn't over his head). He then took this idea and used it to start mixing the vinegar colors in their containers. He thought it was cool that he could make brown by adding red and green to the yellow container.

One thing that surprised me during this activity was how Baby Bear actually used the dropper the whole time to transfer the vinegar to the tray. He's definitely a pour-and-get-it-done-all-at-once efficient guy most of the time. This activity held his attention well enough that he actually enjoyed the slower pace and following a series of steps to accomplish a task. At the very end, I did let him pour the remains of the vinegar containers into the baking soda tray so we could watch one big reaction, though. We had to end with a bang!