Soap Making with kids…
In preparation for Mother’s Day, we decided to make soap for the grandmas.
I wanted to use an organic soap base, but couldn’t find any on short notice. We chose two soap bases that they sell at Michael’s and Amazon.
Supplies
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Shea Butter suspension soap base (Amazon) or Shea Butter Soap (Michaels)
Oatmeal
Soap Mold
Essential Oil
Rubbing Alcohol (for spraying the molds)
We broke the soap up into pieces and microwaved it for about a 1.5 minutes. Clear directions are on the box. This could also be heated in a double broiler.
Once melted, we added a few drops of Lavender oil and oatmeal, and mixed it up.
To keep bubbles out of the soap, N prepared the molds by spraying them with rubbing alcohol. She loved this step. Adult supervision with rubbing alcohol is obviously recommended!
We poured a little bit of soap into each mold and then placed embossing soap stamps on top of the soap. This keeps the stamps from sliding around.
I then poured the soap mixture on top.
Note: In subsequent batches I didn’t bother “gluing” the stamps down, which improved the appearance of the soap.
Waiting for the homemade soap to cool is the hardest part!
However, to keep our spirits high, this was a good time for lunch. What did we eat?
Oatmeal, of course!
Aren’t they pretty?! The two cupcake-looking soaps you can see way back there came out of Silicone Cupcake Molds.
What to Avoid!
In case you’re like me and think, “hmmm, why bother buying that soap base when I can just get some soap and melt it down and make a new bar of soap?”
Here’s what happens…
I thought that I could take a bar of vegetable glycerin soap from Whole Foods and give it the same treatment. This is what happened when I put it in the microwave. Eeek!
I should have known better since I’m familiar with the Microwave-Ivory-Soap-Experiement, which is something to try on another day. It puffed the soap up into a stiff cloud…pretty to look at but completely useless for soap-making.
Then it was time to wrap them up.
We made our own wrapping paper. Check out Handmade Wrapping Paper with Kids for a quick tutorial on how to set this child-friendly activity up.
Good real-world practice with tape cutting, folding, and wrapping.
Happy Mother’s Day to all the beautiful, nurturing, intelligent, kind, selfless, and inspiring moms!! Moms are amazing!