Are you looking for a science experiment that is fun and easy for today? We decided to do this activity today, even though it’s Day 3. It’s a beautiful day, and we thought we’d save the comedy movie for a rainy day 🙂

Make a Volcano

I talked about making a volcano. All you need is some baking soda and vinegar. Food coloring can add some fun color. And you could try adding liquid soap to see what the difference is.

Put the baking soda in a jar or cup. You can experiment with different shapes and sizes. Add the food coloring if you like. Add the soap, too. Then pour the vinegar over the baking soda and watch what happens!

We just happened to have this mini volcano that we found at a museum a couple of years ago on our travels. Amazing that we knew where it was! The orange eruption is without the liquid soap. The green eruption is with the soap. We thought that the orange eruption was more powerful, but the green eruption lasted longer. How did it work out for you?

If you’d like to get more involved and create the volcano, too, check out this post!

It’s Alive! Yeast Experiment

Since we made a volcano last week for school, we were looking for something new. I have been baking a lot of bread since we’ve been home. Thank goodness for my bread maker!! Hippo was asking about how the yeast worked. So I figured this was the perfect time to test it out. I found this experiment that uses yeast to blow up a balloon. I quickly made up a sheet to record our observations. You can download that here: Yeast Experiment (PDF)

The Yeast Experiment Results:

We had so much fun with this experiment! We were also surprised by a few things!

First, our balloon somehow leaked air 😦  So it did not work quite as expected. But it still worked, so that’s okay!

Then we did not know that the yeast would grow so much in the bottle! Makes sense, though 🙂

After a few hours, the entire bottle was filled, and our balloon had inflated nicely. When we took off the balloon and tapped the bottle on the sink, almost ALL of the bubbles popped, and there was hardly anything left in the bottle!

I’ll admit, science has never really been my thing. But this was a LOT of fun!

It’s Alive! Yeast Experiment