My twins absolutely love cooking and they love getting messy too so this is one of their favourite activities!
Whether using their play kitchen area inside, helping me to make something yummy in the real kitchen or outside at their pallet kitchen, they have so much fun and, of course, make a whole lot of mess. But the way I see it, mess is easily cleaned up and always so worth it to see those little smiles, don’t you think?
They can often be found ‘baking’ some cakes and muffins outside in their bushrock sandpit with just plain old sand, water and the odd flower picked from the garden; but sometimes we like to make our extra special fizzy sand cakes. They are so much fun and even introduce some basic science concepts.
Fizzy bubbly sand cakes
Here’s what you need:
- Sand from the sandpit (or dirt works well too)
- A bottle of cooking vinegar (I just use a generic brand, you don’t need fancy!)
- A box of bicarb soda
- Some edicol powder paint (you can also use a little crushed coloured chalk or food colouring)
- Some water and jugs for pouring
- A few old cake, muffin and patty pan tins (we grab ours from the op shop!)
- Some large ice cream containers or bowls for stirring the fizzy mixture
How do we make fizzy sand cakes?
I’m glad you asked – it couldn’t be easier I promise!
Set out your large bowls or ice cream containers on a grassy spot or in the sandpit, wherever you are happy for messy magic to be made.
Let the kids have fun filling the bowls with sand (or dirt for mudcakes) and then let them shake in some bi carb soda, if you don’t want to give them the whole box just separate some into a few cups or bowls for them to use.
You don’t need to worry about measuring how much bicarb you use, but you do need to be generous for lots of fizzy action later on!
Get the kids to give their ‘batter’ a really good stir until all the sand and soda is mixed together.
At this point you can encourage them to start adding a little water to begin making their cake mix ‘batter’ a little more gooey. If you want to make lots of little fizzy cake, you can also let them spoon their mix into the muffin cake trays now. It really doesn’t matter if you keep it in one big bowl or separate it into smaller ones, whatever works for the number of children you have wanting to play.
They can then start adding some colour to their cakes. I like to put a little powder paint colour into trays so they can choose their own colours but if that is just too stressful (I understand, really I do!) just add in a little yourself and they can stir it through and watch their colours come to life.
This part of the activity kept my girls busy for a long time as they mixed up their little potions. It meant we ended up with some lovely brown and green colours instead of the bright reds, blues and yellows I would have liked but it was their own creation and they were very serious about how they wanted those cakes to look!
Now for the fun part! Fill a few little cups or jugs with vinegar, let them pour over their mix and listen for the excited squeals!
As they pour and stir they will begin to see some fizzing bubbles appear and get bigger and bigger….
As they add more vinegar the mix will keep bubbling until it eventually comes to a stop.
As the bubbles fade away it leaves funny little imprints to explore. You can talk about why the sand mix bubbled, colours that you see and the prints left behind. Such a fun sensory experience.
If the mix is still in a large bowl now is the time to get out those little patty cake trays and your little bakers can make sand or mud cakes with their special batter.
There may even be a little fizz left in some if you pour over a bit more vinegar!
So much messy, sensory, baking fun – and you can sit back with a cuppa about now as they will want to do this for ages without any help from you (I just know you got a little excited when you read that part).
You should now have some free time (if there is such a thing) until clean up when you just need to pull the hose out and perhaps mop up a few sandy hand or foot prints that may have snuck past you inside.
And that is just the way we like our messy play here!
What do your kids like to make a mess with?
