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Looking for a fun and easy St. Patrick’s Day activity for kids? This St. Patrick’s Day science experiment is a take on the classic baking soda & vinegar experiment is a great activity for toddlers, preschoolers and even school aged kids! The best part? You can do it easily right at home! Plus a free printable worksheet, perfect for teaching and discussing the experiment with your kids!
I never intended for this to be a kids’ craft and activities only blog. But, if I go back through old posts, it seems like that’s what we’re talking about over here and I’m not totally mad about it.
I’m not that surprised either. Live Well Play Together has always been a place for me to share my own journey through motherhood and much of that right now is toddler-friendly activities.
Don’t worry though, I’ve got lots of fun motherhood posts coming up, and even a couple travel posts as we start planning our spring and summer travel.
Until then, I’m sharing what we’re up to. And that is toddler and preschool activities.
Little will be 2.5 this month and I often find myself trying to keep up and come up with activities that will keep him challenged and engaged. I got the original idea for this classic baking soda and vinegar experiment here and decided to mix it up a little to go with our St. Patrick’s Day theme to create “Leprechaun Sand”.
Little likes to help me in the kitchen when he can, but we hadn’t done any sort of “experiment” before so he was excited to try this and it ended up being a lot of fun!
Leprechaun Sand: A Fun Science Experiment for Kids
I’ll be honest, this can get a little bit messy. You might want to be sure to let your kids wear an art smock, apron, or just go without a shirt if their immediate reaction to messy hands is to wipe them on their shirts.
Supplies
- A medium sized container to hold the baking soda. I used a shallow metal cake pan, but you could also use a plastic bin just as easily.
- A small bowl for the vinegar
- A dropper for mixing – we used a medicine dropper, but you could also use a straw, or a little squirt bottle just as easily.
- Baking Soda
- Vinegar
- Green Food Coloring
Directions
I encourage you to talk with your child about what is happening during each of these steps to help them understand.
- Fill the bottom of container with baking soda.
- Mix vinegar and food coloring in small bowl.
- Use the dropper to drop vinegar onto the baking soda and watch the reaction. Little ones love this – especially if they’ve never seen it before. Little laughed right out loud when he first saw the bubbles. He then kept saying “a little more” each time he put more vinegar in.
- Continue until most of the baking soda has turned green.
- You want the baking soda to absorb all the vinegar – it should not be runny.
- Now, this is the messy part – use your hand to mix the baking soda and vinegar.
- It will be soft and stick together if you want to form it into balls or “rocks” as we called it since we were making sand.
And that’s it. A great sensory experiment and science lesson!
Take it a Step Further
Below are some questions to wrap up the lesson. You can ask all or only a few of these, and feel free to edit them for your own child depending on how old they are.
Taking time to reflect and talk about the experiment afterwards is a good way to get your little ones thinking through a rough version of the scientific method, even without naming it.
It’s also a great way to practice recall and sequencing. For older children, they may practice writing about what happened or even drawing a picture of it.
Questions to Consider
- What are the supplies that we used for today’s experiment?
- You can even have them describe each ingredient.
- For example, the vinegar is liquid, the baking soda is solid.
- The vinegar has a strong smell. (Not a part of the experiment, but it is an observation.)
- You can even have them describe each ingredient.
- What were the steps that we followed?
- What was the reaction when we mixed the vinegar with the baking soda?
- What is the texture of the leprechaun sand?
- Is it hot or cold?
- Is it soft or hard?
- Is it solid or liquid?
Best of all, I’ve created a worksheet with these questions that you can easily download and print here for FREE!
To find more St. Patrick’activities, see here!
If you loved this post, I would be so thankful if you shared it so that others can enjoy it, too. Sharing is caring!
This looks so cute! I added a link on my blog.
https://twomessyboys.com/30-st-patricks-day-artwork-activities-for-kids/
Thanks!
This sounds like such a fun experiment !
We enjoyed it!
Is this “sand” something kids can keep and play with after the experiment is finished? Or should it be thrown away? Thinking of taking this as an activity for my family home visits.
Great question! We used it for a day or two, but tossed it after that!
How fun!! My girls would totally love to do this activity!
We had a great time with it! It’s always fun to do science experiments with kids, and more fun when they are holiday themed!
Another fun idea for the holiday! My daughter would LOVE this!!
How fun! We love sensory play, but get tired of the same old play dough, so it will be fun to mix it up!
This looks like so much fun my daughter will love this. Thanks so much for sharing!
What was your ratio of baking soda to vinegar? It looks so much like sand but all other ideas I’ve seen with these ingredients are about volcanos or everything looks so runny! I want to do this with my kindergarten class and I was hoping that they can make the “sand” and then take it home in a little bag with them. Do you think that would work?
To be entirely honest, I’m not sure. I think the thing that made the difference was using the dropper so that we were only dropping a small amount of vinegar in at a time rather than pouring a bowl of vinegar into the baking soda.
This looks like so much fun! I’m pinning because we’re focusing on st Patrick’s day all week next week and this will be so fun!
It was so fun! Happy Friday!!
Oh wow this looks awesome!! Thanks for sharing with the #bloggersbests
Cool! My kids will love this! Thank you for sharing at The Really Crafty Link Party. Pinned.
Such a fun activity! My kids are aged 10-13 and they still have not tired of the baking soda/vinegar reaction. In fact we just read that heat has an effect on experiments like that and were encouraged to try heating up the vinegar to see if there was a difference in the chemical reaction. Thanks for sharing with us at Love to Learn. Pinned.
That is good to know! I’m sure we’ll be trying different variations of it in the years to come!
i love it, my kids are right into eperimenting so they will love this too 🙂
Oh fun! I hope you all had a good time with it!
This looks like so much fun! I would def do this if I had kids around to play with. 🙂
It is so fun! We loved it!
Thank you!
This is such a fun idea, my kiddos would love it and it’s perfect for homeschool, thanks for sharing!
Absolutely; it really is great for homeschooling!
This looks like such an amazing fun craft to do with the Little’s! Thanks so much for sharing, this is certainly something I will be keen to try in the future 🙂
Jemma. X
Oh good! I hope you enjoy it; we had a great time with it!
I love this! My little guy is about 2.5, as well, and he would totally love an experiment like this. It’s so fun coming up with new ideas to keep them engaged and learning alongside us! 🙂
A good idea for the kids. I have pinned it.
OMG, you’re a genius, and I can’t thank you enough for those questions you have, too! My girls are going to flip over this 🙂
I hope you loved it! It was really fun and truly a good way to start thinking through the scientific method!
What a fun activity for littles!! Totally pinning for later!
You are like super mom! I am so impressed with everything you do!
So glad you liked it! Just trying to keep it together over here!
What an awesome idea! My kids love science and tying it into a holiday is so fun. We’ll have to try it!
I will have to make this with my kids!!! What a fun and easy idea!!
It was so fun!
This is such a great hands on activity and experiment to do with kids . Going to share it with my parents group on fb. Thanks so much for all you do to make learning fun.
You are so kind! Thank you for sharing! Learning can be tons of fun!
This is such a cute activity! My boys would love it, thanks for sharing!
This is a very cute idea. I tutor several children who would really love this. I think I would let them each chose their own color to add to the fun. Great idea! Thanks for the post, and free printable.
Oh – that would really make it fun to be able to choose their own color!
Initially I didn’t indeed on sharing as many recipes or crafts on my own blog, but over the years that has just what has happened. I think with blogging it is just how it evolves for us and whatever works works. So, I agree that I have just gone with the flow for my own blog, as well. Love the kid friendly activity and may have to give a try with my own kids now, too 🙂
You are so right, Janine – I’ve been kind of going with it. That just is what we’re doing over here these days so that’s what I’m sharing. Blogs definitely do evolve over time though depending on what’s going on with a blogger.