colored vinegar and baking soda science experiment

I have a Pinterest board where I have saved many ideas for things I want to do with my kids. Today I looked through them and decided to get brave enough to try this one. I put a little vinegar in three different 1/2 cup mason jars, then added a drop of food coloring to each. Then I sprinkled a layer of baking soda on the bottom of a glass pan. I showed Kevin how to fill a dropper with the colored vinegar and then drop it on the baking soda. He had a fun time seeing it fizz and then settle down so there were blobs of color, and he also liked watching the vinegar slide down "hills" in the baking soda. I admit I was pretty apprehensive of trying this because it involved food coloring, but Heidi wore just a diaper and Kevin and I were in our pajamas, and we stayed on the kitchen floor. We didn't really end up with a mess at all, just a few drops on the floor that were easily wiped up. My friend said that you can also put drops of food coloring all over on the baking soda so you don't have colored vinegar flying everywhere. Heidi was really interested in the activity and wanted to do it herself, so I ended up getting her a pan of her own and a syringe, and with a lot of help she did it too. It's pretty exciting when I put forth the effort to do things like this with the kids and they actually enjoy it and play nicely together. I'm sure we will be doing this again.

Here is what it looked like when we were done.

Heidi started mixing hers with the syringe, so that messed up the design before I got a picture, but that was okay. The sludge looks pretty interesting too. Here's a video of Heidi mixing hers.