We love to play with vinegar and baking soda at our house . We explored it with squirt guns, at a play date and even pretending to be mad scientists. This time we made potions but really we just made a really awesome fun mess! We made these after school this week and already my 2 year old has asked to make so many I am out of vinegar and baking soda. Kids love to pretend and mixing imagination with scientific inquiry is a great way to get them interested in asking questions and testing their theories out. We pretended we were making love potions but not the way that maybe a teenager would think about it. Instead we were making potions to make everyone feel loved, not to fall in love with us and even that fell by the wayside . Bottom line, have fun and make sure you have towels ready!
- Gather your materials. You will need some baking soda, vinegar and then we added food color and food flavoring ( strawberry and cherry) . You will want clear containers, spoons, and whatever you need to protect your house from food color.
- Set out the ingredients and let them explore. While they started I talked about how some people think that potions and spells will make people fall in love and they both thought that was crazy talk! We pretended we were making people feel love but soon they just got into making a potion and the love bit was lost. This is fine the goal wasn’t to teach about love potions so much as simply explore.
- My son saw the baking soda and immediately got excited about the prospect of a fizzy overflowing potion. Only he couldn’t remember what made it bubble and discovered it was not the cherry flavoring.
- My daughter followed her brother’s lead and absolutely adored every minute.
- Once they figured out it was the vinegar they made potions over and over.
In all different color combinations and with as much excitement every time. 
It soon turned into making predictions about if it would overflow or not. 
Mary Wright says
Can I come and live with you all??!!!! It seems so much fun at your house!!! Xx lovely ideas xx
admin says
Please do – we are having a PJ day today since my son is home sick and we are reading under blanket forts!
Eddie - The Usual Mayhem says
It doesn’t matter how many different ways we do the vinegar/baking soda thing, it’s always fun, isn’t it?!! I still love to watch it go up and over the sides like that! Love the idea of doing it as love potions too.
Jen says
This is such a cool idea, and so achievable with what we have in our kitchen cupboards already! Already on my list of things to do after school tomorrow, and hope it will definitely end up as a blog post! Jen
Lucy Glendinning says
I’ve not tried this with my little man yet, but I LOVE new ideas. Thanks so much, this is a great one!
Trisha @ Inspiration Laboratories says
I love the focus on making everyone feel loved!
Adora says
Hank you for sharing this lovely idea! It happens I have a big bottle of vinegar lying around. I’m so going to o this with my 4 year old Han she’s back from school!
Nina says
How fun! And I think I have all these materials so I might just try this. I know my kid will get a kick out of it.
lisa says
what are the measurements for the soda/vingegar? we are going to do this in my son’s 3rd grade class at their Valentine’s Day party. thanks!
admin says
Lisa,
So sorry for the delay I have done this experiment so many times but I have never measured. I always just let it be an experiment in amounts and results. That said doing it with a large group I can see the need for exact measurements. My friend Emma has some in this post http://www.science-sparks.com/2013/01/21/snow-volcano/ I hope this helps!
Kylie says
I absolutely loved this idea and decided to do it with my preschoolers. Malt vinegar was delivered instead of white vinegar and we ended up making what the children called stinky potions instead. They were obviously darker in colour and smelled really strong and the children added things like toy bugs etc. Think I will be doing this again at Halloween as well as valentines day 🙂
Nina says
We did this yesterday and my son had a ton of fun. It was the first time he experimented with baking soda and vinegar. He wanted to keep going and going (too bad I didn’t have enough).
We used a different kind of food coloring that looked more like a paste, so the actual bubbles themselves didn’t get colored, although once they died down the liquid eventually did. Still, it’s all part of experimenting, right?
paige taylor says
Do you think that this would be a good idea for my 8th grades science fair project but have mulitpule diffrent powdres?
Allison McDonald says
I think that is a fun idea but maybe too simple for 8th grade.