My kids have officially been out of school for 15 days.  That means that for 14 days and 23 hours, I’ve heard complaints that they have nothing to do and are bored.  My argument that they have every toy, bike, scooter, that any person could humanly want, a park 50 feet from their backdoor, and friends in houses all around them, falls on deaf ears.   “But we’ve done it all!! There’s nothing left!”  Nothing left.  At ages 7 & 9 there’s nothing left in the world for them to do.  Sometimes, I cannot even comprehend how difficult my children’s lives must be.  They truly are leading a miserable existence.

Luckily for my sanity, I have planned that every Wednesday is going to be science experiment day.  Yeah, they’re fun and the kids get crazy excited over the experiments, but even better they are my saving grace when dealing with the whiners supreme.

“Oh, I’m so sorry you’re whining, because I was totally going to let you pick out the next experiment we do. Darn it!”

“Complaining again?!  That’s too bad because I was going to let you invite your friends over this week for the experiment.”

“Dang! Was that a complaint I heard? I guess you’re too bored to participate in the experiment. You’d better head up to your room to find something better to do!”

I bought the book Science Rocks!  and even without doing one experiment, the book has given my kids hours of enjoyment.  They have poured over each page.  Each deciding which experiments they want to do the most.  Made lists of all the materials we need and have had many discussions between themselves, of  what they think is going to happen during the experiments.   The best part is that most of the experiments use items found in every household, so you’re not spending a lot buying materials.

The first experiment we did was, Making Soda Shoot.  And I really think I was more excited than the kids. Soda shooting into the air making a huge ass mess?!  Yep, sign me up.

What you will need: **Bottles of different sodas (I used liter soda bottles, but the little ones would work too), Mentos Mint roll (one roll for every 2 bottles of soda), paper, and toothpicks/kabob sticks, scissors & hole puncher. (optional)

Directions:

1. Place a soda bottle on level ground and open it.  Make sure it’s somewhere that you don’t mind getting crazy messy!

2. Cut the paper and roll into a tube, which you insert into the neck of the bottle. Push the toothpick/kabob stick, through the middle of one end of the tube. I used a hole punch to make holes because I found it a bit difficult to just push the toothpicks through the paper. I also used 2 sticks per tube, because I felt that they would hold the mints better.

2. Place the paper tube on a table and insert 4-6 mints into the tube. I did this step on the table just in case a mint dropped though. Carefully, place the tube with the mints inside into the neck of the bottle, with the toothpicks resting on the rim of the bottle.

3. Pull the sticks quickly out from the tubes and jump back before the drink erupts!

4. Realize that you forgot to tell your children not to take a soda shower.

All in all this experiment did not disappoint!  It was crazy fun! Go on buy Science Rocks! and get your summer experimenting on!

**When buying soda, please note that diet soda produces the highest soda shooters.  I bought a variety of diet and regular sodas and had the kids hypothesize which soda would create the biggest gusher!