How to make your own erupting volcano

This is a great fun experiment the kids will love and it uses ingredients you’ll probably have in your pantry.

What you’ll need:

A plastic bottle
6 cups of flour
2 cups of salt
4 tablespoons of oil
water
2 tablespoons of baking soda
white vinegar
food colouring
dishwashing liquid.

Method:

Mix the flour, salt, oil and 2 cups of water in a bowl to make the dough.
Place the empty bottle on a tray.
Sculpt the dough around the bottle to create a volcano shape, leaving top of bottle clear.
Fill the bottle up with warm water and a few drops of food colouring.
Add 4 drops of dish liquid and the baking soda to the water.
Slowly pour in the vinegar and the volcano will erupt.

I love the idea of getting the kids sculpting and making their own volcano as well as getting it to erupt.

You could easily just do the experiment in a bottle without the dough if you wish. I also like to do this outside and then the mess doesn’t matter and the kids make a whole game around it.

Have you ever tried this before? Please add comment below.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.com

19 Comments

- - mom81879 said
  - 27 Nov 2019
    1:37 pm
Good old bicarbonate of soda and vinegar, a real myriad of usefulness

- - mom101628 said
  - 27 Apr 2017
    4:27 pm
Such fun for all – thanks for sharing.

- - mom112217 said
  - 12 Apr 2017
    8:37 am
A great craft idea that is alot of fun!

- - mom94125 said
  - 01 Sep 2016
    9:10 pm
i have done this experiment with the kids before but with paper mache base and we had red lava with food colouring. fun experiment for the kids to enjoy

- - ella12 said
  - 31 Aug 2016
    2:02 pm
Lots of fun for everyone here (-:

- - Melissa89 said
  - 29 Jul 2016
    11:21 am
Ive made one of these before, so fun!

- - mom113991 said
  - 13 May 2016
    11:53 pm
id love to do this with my children. I remember doing it as a kid too…

- - serotonin said
  - 08 May 2016
    12:22 pm
I remember doing something like this in school. Will be heaps of fun doing this with my kids!

- - sharna_booth_weinrowski said
  - 02 May 2016
    9:42 am
These seems really simple with such a huge impact!
I will definitely try this!

- - aprilb1 said
  - 15 Apr 2016
    10:56 pm
I remember making one of these for a school project as a kid 🙂

- - shelley shelley said
  - 12 Apr 2016
    2:28 pm
Cool, I remember when I was younger and we did these in primary school. It was so much fun at that age 🙂 memories…

- - sharna_booth_weinrowski said
  - 11 Apr 2016
    12:44 pm
We will attempt this on the weekened! It seems quite simple with a lot of impact!

- - meedee said
  - 03 Apr 2016
    6:50 pm
I loved doing this sort of thing with my kids when they were little.
Bring on the Grandchildren so i can delight in all these things again 🙂

- - mom101628 said
  - 24 Mar 2016
    3:21 pm
And they are learning science without even knowing it!

- - mom134803 said
  - 24 Mar 2016
    3:59 am
Sounds like fun !

- - june11 said
  - 19 Mar 2016
    5:50 pm
Can you re-fill this a few times without the volcano dteriorating?

- - mom140882 said
  - 18 Mar 2016
    7:08 pm
My kids LOVED this!!

- - mom71670 said
  - 17 Mar 2016
    9:13 pm
Great idea, especially with school holidays coming up.

- - mom160421 said
  - 17 Mar 2016
    8:59 pm
This is going to be a great project for children during the next school holidays.