Halloween Science - Dancing Bat Droppings!

This is a quick & fun activity you can do at any time of the year. However, I made it into a Halloween activity by telling Ollie & Phoebe that the raisins were bat droppings & we were going to magically make them dance! 

There’s two aspects of fun to this - the initial fizzy reaction followed by watching the raisins slowly rising to the top of the liquid & then ‘dancing’ up & down. And the children can do it all themselves, Phoebe even helped me gather all the ingredients & put them out on the table. 

All you need for this is a glass container, water, bicarbonate of soda, white vinegar & raisins. A tuff tray would be ideal to catch the overflow but ours was in use so we put a high sided plate underneath instead. 

Here’s what to do:-
Pour the water into the container about 2/3 full, add a handful of raisins and a generous scoop of bicarbonate of soda (you can give them magical names if you wish - powdered unicorn horn, troll tears etc!)

Pour a small jug of white vinegar into the potion - this will react with the bicarbonate and fizz up over the top of the container - excitement galore!

When the fizz calms down the raisins will probably still be at the bottom of the container. Keep watching - within about 20 seconds they will start floating up & down with the bubbles in the water. 

You can set off the reaction again by adding more vinegar so make sure you have spare!