It’s amazing what you can do with an ordinary bar of Ivory soap.  You can explode it, smash it, make it into dough, or even make — who would guess?– more soap?

The idea of exploding Ivory soap was from Pinterest, but I made up some more fun stuff to do with the puffed up soap.

The fun begins with exploding the soap. (Sorry, I don’t know why I didn’t take pictures of this, but if you search for it on Pinterest or the web, you can find lots of pictures.)  Put a bar of Ivory soap on a plate covered with a paper towel.  Stick it in the microwave for a couple of minutes.  There’s not a certain time limit, just take it out when it stops growing.

Watch the soap through the microwave window.  It is AMAZING!  The soap starts exploding and pieces of puffed soap stick out of the original bar.  (Argh! I really wish I got a picture of this!) Anyway, when the soap stops growing, take it out of the microwave.  Be careful! It can get pretty hot.  Admire it for a while it cools down.  When it’s cool, go ahead and touch it.  The soap looks puffy, but it’s actually pretty firm.  After you’ve exploded the soap, you can stop right there and use it as you would a regular bar of soap, or you can keep going for more fun.

The next thing to do is to pound it into pieces.  Spread out some sort of floor cover,(tablecloth, newspaper, etc.) take a small hammer, and pound it to smithereens!

When it is pretty much powder, you can make soap dough.  To make white soap dough, add a small amount of shaving cream to the soap powder.

Mix it up with your hands.  Experiment with adding more or less shaving cream.  The dough is about right when you can squeeze once and it holds its shape, but crumbles when you squeeze it again.

You can make towers, balls, handprints, maybe even a sandcastle with this stuff.

If you would like to make your dough colored, add a few drops of food coloring to the shaving cream before mixing.

After you’re done playing with soap dough, you can mold the dough into pretty soaps.

You will probably need to add more shaving cream to your dough so it holds itself together better.

If anyone is messy from all this fun, no problem.  Just take your newly made soap and wash up!

****************************Notes*********************************

I think Ivory soap explodes best if it is freshly bought from the store.

This is a great activity to do with kids, but it can get a little messy.  Make sure to adequately cover your play space, and you should be fine.  Have a blast!

***Allison***