My kids are baking soda and vinegar mixing experts at this point. We’ve done potions, explosions, and volcanoes and they still can’t get enough! Last week we went a little spooky with it for these “foaming” (okay, puking) pumpkins! I saw that Kiwi Crate had a box for this and thought–we can do that ourselves with stuff we already have at home.

This is a great experiment to try with kids on Nov 1 right before you pitch your jack-o-lanterns. We carved a few ahead of time just to try this out, and we will definitely be giving it another go after Halloween with a few modifications.

We started by shaking a healthy amount of baking soda down into the empty pumpkin. Roughly 1/4 of the box is what we went with and that amount would last for two dumps of vinegar/water.

Next let your kids mix whatever color food coloring they want into a cup full of vinegar (also can add water to stretch the vinegar and make it last longer).

We didn’t do this, but will be trying it next time. If you want a more frothy reaction, add a few squirts of dish soap into your colored vinegar/water solution and stir it up.

Now let the fun begin! Let the kids dump the vinegar/water/soap concoctions into their jack-o-lantern and enjoy the reaction.

To modify this into a STEM/homeschool lesson or just get a little education out of it, talk to your kids about why this happens. For my older boys (ages 5 and 6) just learning that a chemical reaction occurred was enough explanation from this non-science teacher mom.

Either way, let them experiment and take over the process. Trying out new colors and figuring out what ratios works best is part of the fun! My 2 year old just wanted to touch the food coloring, so this is your warning to wear play clothes.

They stayed at this a while, and even got a huge thrill from adding in crushed leaves…whatever works, am I right?!

*Disclaimer–this potion did mess up our grass so might be best to try on concrete or on a tablecloth, oops!

Let me know if you try this in the comments and as always please considering sharing on Pinterest to help my blog grow.