Art & Science Collide: Ivory Soap Experiment

In searching for science experiments to do with the girls this summer, I came across the microwave soap explosion experiment. How cool is that?!! Oh my gosh, the girls just LOVED this! We probably blew up 7 bars of soap! Keep in mind, if you try this project, only IVORY SOAP works. Apparently air is whipped into Ivory soap while it's made. When you microwave it, the air expands making the soap explode!

Hmmm....now, what to do with 7 bars of exploded soap???? Well, you can make your own soaps!!

We broke up the exploded soap into flakes, which was fun in itself!

Then added in some water and liquid watercolors to color the soap.

We then smooshed the concoction into cookie cutters and let it harden.

 Ella drew on some of them with a toothpick. :-)

They popped out of the cookie cutters pretty easily, but we did discover that the wetter I made the soap mixture, the better the soaps stayed together. The mixtures that weren't as thoroughly wet, the shaped soap tended to crumble.