Outdoor Baking Soda and Vinegar Experiment

Need a fun and easy idea this week? Toddlers and preschoolers will love this classic baking soda and vinegar experiment that they can do with friends on a large scale! GO BIG with this GIANT FIZZY SCIENCE BIN!

Each summer we host summer camp at home. This summer my big kids took over and hosted their own backyard camps. For their science themed day they invited the campers to explore a giant fizzy baking soda bin in a kiddie pool!

It was a hit!

We’ve done jumbo baking soda science bins in large sensory bins before, but this time we went even BIGGER and used our kiddie pool!

Kiddie pools (aka baby pools) are my favorite outdoor activity tool, especially during the summer! You can see some of our favorite kiddie pool activities in action in this video.

Every activity is more fun when it’s jumbo sized in the kiddie pool! There is also space for everyone to experiment!

Here are a few favorite BIG kiddie pool activities:

How do you set up this jumbo baking soda and vinegar experiment?

Before you get started, you need to make sure you have all the materials!

The basic supply list:

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Fizzy baking soda science experiments are fun and amazing for helping toddlers and preschoolers develop their fine motor skills! We love to use jumbo eye droppers for this activity because they are easy for little fingers to hold and squeeze!

Before toddlers and preschoolers ever pick up a pencil to write, you want to give them a lot of opportunities to strengthen their finger muscles and build the fine motor skills needed to be successful.

Set up is so easy! Here’s how to make this baking soda and vinegar science activity really quick:

Pour baking soda into your kiddie pool! The baking soda may be hard, so use a wooden spoon or your hands to crush any hard blocks and spread out the baking soda to fill the base of the pool.
Put vinegar into several cups and add a few drops of liquid watercolors. Stir.
Add jumbo droppers (or pipettes) into the cups of vinegar and you’re ready to start playing!

Give each child a cup of vinegar and a dropper and they’re ready to start squirting the vinegar onto the baking soda!

The colorful fizzy eruptions are so fun to watch!

This baking soda and vinegar experiment can keep kids occupied for a long time!

When kids run out of vinegar, just refill their cup and they can keep experimenting! I like to use large sturdy cups to hold the vinegar because kids need less refills and they work great as play tools as kids begin to experiment with the baking soda.

Let children lead this activity! You may find that they use their creativity and tools to try new things and explore materials in ways that you weren’t expecting.

We love fizzy eruptions on a smaller scale, so it was fun to see our campers create larger eruptions all around the kiddie pool using their vinegar cups!

Wooden spoons and scissor scoops were a few other favorite tools during this activity!