Homemade Lava Lamp

We've been doing a lot of activities outside of the house lately and today I wanted to find something to do inside.  Luckily pinterest exists and while perusing the Parent Inspiration Board I share with some mommy friends I rediscovered a blog post from Twodaloo about making a lava lamp at home with simple materials (side note: how great is that blog?!? so many ideas).  So, I gathered my materials and we got down to business.

Materials: 2 large glass vases, generic alka seltzer, food coloring, cell phone with flashlight app, glass casserole dish, vegetable oil (could be any oil), water, plastic dinosaurs, rubber duck.

First I poured water in the big vase and put it on top of my make shift light box (cell phone with flashlight app on under a glass casserole dish).

okay mom, I'm ready to go

I poured vegetable oil slowly on top of the water.  this part was fun to watch, the bubbles of oil caught the light and were very pretty.  Then we added many, many drops of food coloring.

hmmm

oooooh

 The food coloring travels slowly through the oil before dispersing in the water

Ooooo

 Next we tossed in some dinosaurs.  It was pretty cool to watch because they got coated in the oil and made little oily streaks and tunnels in the water.

In they go

Next we decided to try the long rectangular vase.  This time we added more oil and blue food coloring.  The color took forever to make it's way through the oil.

For. Ev. Er.

FINALLY!

 I poured some water over the top to see what would happen and it made neat looking waves

very prehistoric looking

 But the best part was tossing in some alka seltzer.

This is what happens when you toss in 4 alka seltzer at once

he loved it

 Back to the yellow vase, in go the alka seltzer

we tossed in the rubber duck so we could watch him dance

 And that was 30 colorful minutes of our day.