Our nap-time, outdoor, messy science-and-art project of the day started out simply enough. The materials were gathered: a roll of paper, zip-top baggies, paper towels, baking soda, vinegar and paint. The plan was to make small “pillows” of baking soda inside pieces of paper towel, then put a pillow of baking soda, some washable paint and a good soaking of vinegar inside a zip-top bag, seal it, toss it on the paper and watch it explode in messy glory!
Doesn’t that sound cool?
JediBoy was so excited about today’s messy project.
But we tried, and we tried, and we tried, and this is what we got:
Bags that would swell, and seem to be about to burst, but would slowly deflate instead of popping in magnificent, painty glory. We made at least five or six bags with different amounts of baking soda and vinegar, different amounts of paint and even different size squares of paper towel. But nothing. Why won’t this pop?
Eventually, JediBoy was so discouraged that he started stomping on the bags, which was fun, of course.
And the stomping method produced really cool spatter paintings, like this one.
We kept trying until we were at the bottom of our baking soda box. Since there wasn’t much left, we decided to make our final effort without any paper towel at all, in the hopes that we could squeeze the top shut extra fast.
That bag was the closest we got to success, you see:
Except instead of exploding, it just… peed.
Peeing paint? That’s not what I signed up for.
Any idea what we could do better next time?
