I kept the kids focused on one task for almost an hour! I KNOW! It's like some sort of Christmas miracle... speaking of Christmas, I promised Christmas pictures more than a month ago. Maybe I'll get to it by Valentine's Day...
Anyway. I found
this magical kid distracter on Pinterest. There are multiple websites that have this, so I don't know which is the original as far as that goes. I must have pinned it ages ago, but only just went through all my kid-fun pins a few days ago, hoping to come up with something to ease my guilt at having nothing for my nearly-4-year-old boy to do.
So, a little vinegar tinted with food coloring, a dropper and a plate with baking soda in it was all it took to mesmerize my children for much longer than I thought it would. In fact, they probably would have kept doing it if I hadn't worried (by the 3rd plate... each) that I was going to run out of baking soda.
His face says it all.
So does hers.
There were many, many cries of "Cool!" and "Awesome!"
The plates would get swampy and the fizz would get to be less and less and that's when I would switch it out. But they loved every minute of it. Even with all the colors mixed together, each plate was really quite beautiful (for a plate of baking soda and tinted vinegar). I would have taken pictures of the finished plates if my camera battery hadn't died. Next time, I suppose. :)
After a while, they were mixing colors to see what they could come up with. I think when we do it again (yes, we're doing it again sometime soon - the kids were very enthusiastic about repeating the experiment), I will probably offer some additional colors as I only had four this time.
I'd say the entire cost of this project for BOTH kids was about $1.00. Not bad at all.
It was so simple and cheap, though I'll say that I was glad that my kids are not so very young anymore. I had to supervise them, but I did NOT have to run defense for the carpet, chair cushions or other woven fibers.
