Fizzy Volcano with Playdough

We’ve been joining in with the 12 months of sensory dough series, and sharing a new type of dough each month. This month it’s fizzy dough, and we have cheated a little bit because our activity is not a fizzy dough but it is a really cool classic fizzy experiment that you can do using any type of playdough (shop bought or one of your favourite playdough recipes). If you haven’t tried this experiment before, give it a go!

For this activity you will need:

• Small bottle or jar
• Playdough
• Warm water
• Bicarbonate of soda / baking powder
• Washing up liquid
• Food colouring (optional)
• Vinegar

Your chemical reaction is going to happen inside the jar, so this will form the mouth of your errupting volcano. Use the playdough to build a volcano around it. You could get more detailed with this and create a whole dinosaur land including the volcano, with land, sea, and different terrains but we kept ours quite simple this time. Your playdough will get wet and covered in the fizzy volcano “lava” so if you have old playdough this is a good activity to get one more use out of it before it’s time to throw it out.

Inside the jar, put some warm water with a spoon of bicarbonate of soda. Then add some washing up liquid and some food colouring to give a better effect to the eruption.

Once everything is ready, add some vinegar to the top of your volcano and watch it errupt. If the vinegar isn’t having enough effect then stir it a little, or add some more

It’s lots of fun to watch, and since the experiment is quite simple children can do all of it themselves. You could experiment with using different things to see which gets the better reaction – like replace the vinegar with lemon juice, and see what happens.

This experiment works because the bicarbonate of soda, or baking powder, is a base and the vinegar or lemon is an acid, and when they combine it causes this chemical reaction. You can read more explanations about the reaction here. 

If your kids are really into fizzy volcano experiments you could try this apple volcano science experiment too for a cool variation. With the apples, this fits in great for a fall theme too.

Anything that fizzes, explodes or reacts is a whole lot of fun for kids and a great way to explore science in a hands on way.

More Fizzy Dough

Here are more fizzy dough ideas to try, from the 12 months of sensory dough series.

Lemon-Lime Fizzy Dough | Lemon Lime Adventures

Fizzy Dough Cupcakes | Study at Home Mama

Fizzy Bath Dough | Still Playing School

Fizzy Playdough Fun with Fantastic Eruptions Music | Witty Hoots

Primordial Fizzy Playdough | Peakle Pie

Fizzy Lemon Juice Dough | Creative World of Varya

Edible Fizzy Dough | Wildflower Ramblings
Fizzy Ice-cream Dough | Squiggles and Bubbles

Pre-Cursive Handwriting with Fizzy Dough | Sugar Aunts

Fizzy Flower Sensory Dough! |  Preschool Powol Packets

Rainbow Fizzy Cloud Dough | Powerful Mothering

Fizzy Volcano Play Dough | In The Playroom

Orange Fizzy Dough on Frogs and Snails and Puppy Dog Tail

Check back next month for our Sand Dough activities!