Lava Lamps

While real lava lamps rely on special ingredients and secrets, we made our own at home ones today.  The kids had a blast learning about the science (those that understood what I was talking about!) of how water and oil don't mix.  The younger ones were just amazed at how cool these lava lamps looked when they got to shack them up.

What you will need:

• glass container (you choose the size, I used medium salsa jars.  That way they aren't to big or to small, but you could use sealer jars, canning jars, baby food jars......)
• oil of any type (I used baby oil, cause I had left overs from one of our Christmas projects, to which I found at the Dollar Store.... I would recommend using olive oil or any expensive oil, not that it would change the out come, its just that you might as well save the money and use something a little cheaper)
• Food coloring
• glitter, sequences, small beads..... (we just used sequences)
• Hot glue gun (or better yet, clear silicon if you have some around home)

Here's how we made these "AWESOME" things ~and most of you have the items floating around your own home.

1. Fill the jar about a third full of your oil
2. Sprinkle your glitter (or what ever you want to use that is sparkly and eye catching) on top of the oil
3. Add water to nearly the top of the jar (I went about 2/3 of the way up, for this step)
4. Add a few drops of food coloring to make your desire color of water
5. Finish filling the jar with water, don't go right to the top but pretty close
6. Add your hot glue or silicone to the inner lip of the lip and screw on to the jar 
7. Run another bead of glue around the edge of the lid to make sure it is sealed well (after I did this I wrapped a pipe cleaner around the glue just to kinda hide it
8. Flip jar over, back and forth, shake it up!!! Fun some fun watching what happens.

After our lamps were made I let the kids decorate the lids to hide the writing from the original use of the jar and we put each child's name on their jar with foam stickers too.  

Check out Ducky's Photo's for additional pictures of our craft/science project.