Have a kid who loves to draw? Check out our NEW Drawing Skills Master Class!  Designed for kids 6-11 to gain skills and confidence.

How To Make Baking Soda and Vinegar Volcanoes

by Jean Van't Hul
May 15, 2023
477 Shares
baking soda volcano featured image

Learn how to make baking soda and vinegar volcanoes. This classic science experiment is easy to do and such a blast!

Updated June 2023

We bet you’ve tried this experiment before! It’s one that we do over and over again because it’s super simple but the results are BIG!

Using the classic combination of baking soda and vinegar in a playdough volcano is an activity your kids will be sure to love!

Here’s how we do it.

homemade volcanoes pinterest
Photo by Rachel Withers

Baking Soda and Vinegar Volcanoes

MATERIALS 

  • Plastic Bin
  • small recycled jars
  • Playdough (you could also use salt dough)
  • Nature items like flowers, sticks, leaves, and pebbles
  • Baking soda (start with 2 TBSP)
  • Colored vinegar in jars with pipettes

INSTRUCTIONS

  1. Build a playdough volcano

    First, shape the volcano by wrapping playdough around plastic or glass jars.

    If you don’t have playdough on hand, you could mix a quick batch of salt dough to use for this purpose.

  2. Add nature landscaping (optional)

    Next you can add landscaping to your volcano, if you’d like.
    You can poke various nature items into the playdough to create trees, flowers, and bushes, much like we’ve done with forest dioramas using playdough. We love using pebbles for boulders and making bridges out of sticks.

  3. Prep your volcano!

    Scoop 2 TBSP baking soda into the little jar inside the playdough volcano. Set up jars of colored vinegar. I like to have the primary colors (red, yellow, blue) available so that as they mix, more colors are created.

    baking soda volcanoes

    Now it’s time to give kids the green light! They can begin squeezing vinegar into their volcano with a pipette. Eventually the urge to dump more vinegar and create an overpoweringly fizzy volcano will likely over take your kids!

    pouring vinegar into baking soda volcano

We found that some of the eruptions overflowed the dish the volcano was in, so you’ll probably want some paper towels or dishrags on hand to catch it. Or try making the volcano in a sensory bin!

erupting volcano
Photo by Rachel Withers

More Science Experiments for Kids

Pin It for Later

baking soda and vinegar volcanoes pinterest
How To Make Baking Soda and Vinegar Volcanoes How To Make Baking Soda and Vinegar Volcanoes

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

477 Shares
Print
Share
Pin477