Growing Soap / Painting a Cloud

Have you ever heard of the experiment where you out a bar of Ivory soap in the microwave? We did it today. It. Was. Awesome. 

I have been wanting to try it out for a long time but whenever I read about it, I always felt like it would be such a short activity. A few minutes in the microwave and then it's over. So when I saw the idea to colour the soap afterwards, I had no more excuses and I knew it was time. 

I got the idea here: http://www.two-daloo.com/sensory-art-play-puffy-rainbow-clouds/

Step 1: Growing Soap

Supplies: paper plate, bar of Ivory soap, microwave 

First of all, while researching, I read on every single website that the soap has to be Ivory. Other brands won't work because they are made the same way. To keep it super simple, air is added during manufacturing and that's what makes the soap expand with the heat of the microwave, similar to what happens to popcorn. Again, Ivory soap only!

I decided to cut my soap in half so that we could do it twice, and I'm glad I did, because it meant we got to see the amazing-ness twice but also because the soap grew more than I expected and I did have to wipe down the microwave afterwards. 

We out the half bar of soap on a paper plate (a monkey one left over from Monkey's birthday!) and put it in the microwave. 

We put the timer on for 2 minutes. Monkey loved pressing the buttons as he's never done that before. 

Then we watched. It didn't take long for the soap to start growing and it looked so cool. You need to stop the microwave as soon as you notice that the soap isn't growing anymore. We found it took about a minute, maybe a bit longer. 

And this is what it looked like:

I'll admit I was probably a bit more excited about what happened than Monkey was. He liked watching it grow but I was really amazed by what happened. 

I transferred the soap to a tin tray for the next part of the activity. 

After some encouragement, I convinced Monkey to touch it, too. Some kids would jump right in with both hands but my boy doesn't love to be messy so he bravely touched it with two fingers..

Step 2: Painting on a Cloud 

Supplies: small cups, water, food colouring, droppers

Monkey helped me mix up the food colouring into the small cups of water. 

Then Monkey used the droppers to colour the soap/cloud. 

I just love how it turned out. 

We ended up doing the other half of the bar of soap after Monkey's dad got home later that night. This one was too neat not to share with him, too! 

Also, our house smelled amazingly clean all day and night :)

Mar