Glass Vase Lava Lamps

Home-made lava lamps are definitely a fan-favourite child activity! Just like all activities on The Crafty Corner, they are very simple to create and offer a kid-friendly learning experience. This experiment covers the science area of STEM because children will get to mix ingredients together. However, it also works as an art experiment too because they can experiment with different colours to see which primary colours mix to make a different colour.

What you need:

- Glass vase, plastic water bottle, or mason jar

- Food colouring

- Oil (canola, olive, vegetable)

- Water

- Alka Seltzer tablets

How to do it:

1. The measurements will vary depending on what you are using to hold the ingredients. The first thing that you will want to do is fill your bottle, vase, or jar with water about 1/4 of the way full.

2. Next, fill the vase with whatever type of oil you are using so that the vase is 3/4 of the way full. Do not fill the vase completely because when you add in the other ingredients to make the lava lamp start, you will want room at the top otherwise it will overflow!

3. Let your child choose what colour or colours to add into the vase. Let them experiment with different mixtures to let them learn which colours make what, but encourage them not to mix so many colours that their experiment turns dark because then it is difficult to see the magic happen!

4. Add in an Alka Seltzer tablet one at a time and watch the lava lamp go!

What to teach your children:

It is important to also make sure the child is learning something from this experiment. Besides colour blending, you can also teach them about viscosity. Explain to the child that the reason the oil isn't mixing with the water is because the oil is a thicker viscosity than water, so they stay separate. Finally, tell your child that the lava lamp works because the Alka Seltzer tablet releases air bubbles in the water which get pushed up into the oil, and just like oil and water, oil and air cannot mix since one is a liquid and one is a gas, so the air bubbles from the water stay as bubbles in the thick oil.

We hope that you enjoyed this experiment and that your child learned something new! Don't forget to give us a share so that more children can learn through STEM based activities!