Your Preschooler Can Create Bubbly Art with Three Everyday Ingredients

Grown-ups: If you’re looking for a simple art project that’ll entertain your three- to five-year-old, check your pantry. Do you have baking soda, distilled white vinegar, and food coloring on hand? Good. You and your preschooler can now make Fizzy Paints, a fizz-tastic activity from America’s Test Kitchen Kids’ latest subscription box program, the Preschool Chefs’ Club. 

This activity—and every recipe and activity in each Preschool Chefs’ Club box—features easy-to-follow step photos so kids (and their grown-ups) know exactly what to do from start to finish, and a section that explains more about the recipe, or what’s going on in the activity (see “What’s Happening,” below, to help your preschooler understand the fizzy science in this project). Plus, our Grown-Ups Guide included in the box outlines learning goals for each piece of Preschool Chefs’ Club content, from hand-eye coordination to self-expression.

Follow along below to learn how to transform those three ingredients into bubbly works of art! For more activities and preschooler-ready recipes, join the club. As a bonus, for the month of September, any 6- or 12-month Preschool Chefs’ Club subscribers will receive a free copy of our new picture book for kids, Mitsy the Oven Mitt Goes to School: A Story About Being Brave.

No Safety Considerations
Time: 15 minutes (or more!)

Gather Equipment

• Dry measuring cups
• Liquid measuring cup
• 9-inch pie plate or 8-inch square baking dish
• 6 small bowls and/or small drinking glasses
• Rimmed baking sheet
• Spoon
• Eyedropper (It’s included in the Preschool Chefs’ Club box!)

Prepare Ingredients

• ½ cup baking soda
• ¾ cup distilled white vinegar
• Yellow, red, and blue food coloring (It’s included in the Preschool Chefs’ Club box!)

Get Started!

Place pie plate and 6 small bowls on rimmed baking sheet. Add baking soda to pie plate. Gently shake plate to spread baking soda into even layer across bottom of plate. 

Add ¼ cup vinegar to each of 3 small bowls. Add 10 drops yellow food coloring to first bowl, 10 drops red food coloring to second bowl, and 10 drops blue food coloring to third bowl.

Use spoon to stir each bowl until color is evenly distributed, cleaning spoon after stirring each bowl.

Use eyedropper to mix different colors of vinegar in remaining 3 small bowls. What happens when you combine a dropper of red with a dropper of blue? Red and yellow? Yellow and blue?

Use eyedropper to squeeze colored vinegar onto surface of baking soda, creating a picture or design. 

What’s Happening?

When baking soda comes in contact with an acid, such as vinegar, it triggers a chemical reaction that creates fizzy, bubbly carbon dioxide gas.

In recipes that use baking soda and acidic ingredients (think: vinegar, buttermilk, lemon juice), that same reaction causes batters and doughs to rise. Be on the lookout for baking soda in everything from pancakes to cookies to muffins.

Hey! Did you know ATK Kids has its very own YouTube channel? Subscribe now and watch great, funny, silly, and delicious cooking videos for the whole family.

Check out our new series Wicked Good: