Lime Volcanos: A Fun Science Activity for Kids!

Happy New Year! I hope you all had a lovely Christmas break and enjoyed seeing the New Year in, either awake or asleep in bed! We’ve had some hard core family time over the last couple of weeks and we’re all feeling much better for it. Well, apart from having eaten far too many Festive Foody Treats…

I discovered how to make lemon volcanoes over on the fabulous Babble Dabble Do and immediately went to riffle in my fridge.  Aargh no lemons!  Luckily I spotted a couple of limes, so we didn’t have to contact the ‘News At Ten’ after all.

If you’ve made the conventional volcanoes you’ll be delighted with the very beautiful end results and more importantly, that no-one smells of fish and chips afterwards!

What You Need:

• Lemon or Lime
• Bicarbonate of Soda
• Liquid food colouring
• A plate
• A teaspoon
• + / – Washing up liquid

What You Do:

• Slice off just enough of the bottom of the lemon or lime to make it sit on the plate.
• Either slice off the top of the lime straight across, or cut out a circle from the top, which will give you a cone shape out of the top.
• Using a teaspoon, break up the flesh in the main body of the lime, to release as much of the juice as you can.
• Put drops of food colouring on to the flesh and then put a teaspoon full of bicarbonate of soda into the lime and squish it all about (technical term reserved specifically for Lime Volcanoes).

It will all ooze and froth away and make the most gorgeous colour patterns on the plate.  You can add a dash of washing up liquid before adding the soda bicarbonate if you want the reaction to last longer!

The kids loved pummelling away at their lime volcano and kept adding more juice and more bicarbonate of soda then scraping, dolloping, squeezing, mixing and squishing all over again.  We just used red and blue colouring – I’d love to see any photos of different colour combos if you try it 🙂

Lots of fun!  Not that ‘Angry Bird’ seems to approve…

For other crafty ideas, you might like Candle Dripping, How To Make Snow, Fizzy Colour Drops or just enjoy a browse through the Crafts & Activities or Hand-Eye Co-ordination categories…
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