We made snow!

On Friday we made "snow!" It was so much fun. I don't know what was more fun, watching what happens in the microwave or getting to play with it afterwards. I got the idea from this pin that I had seen many times on Pinterest and it looked like so much fun.

First you start of with a bar of ivory soap (I used a total of 3 bars to make enough for my entire class).

Unwrap a bar of soap and place it in the microwave.

Next let the bar of soap cook. It takes less than 2 minutes for it to be done! We loved watching it expand and grow into weird shapes. 

Before taking it out the microwave you might want to let it cool off a little, ours was a little hot. 

I let each student feel the large piece that formed from each bar of soap and to describe what they were feeling. It is hard, but it does have soft areas and it's pretty easy to break apart. I was expecting it to be more foamy feeling and not so hard. Next I broke it up into pieces and gave each student a piece to play with. I put it in containers because I didn't not know if it would be difficult to clean up soap. We used our hands, spoons, measuring cups and other materials to explore the "snow" with. 

After playing with it for awhile, it does break up into lots of small, fine pieces, which made me really happy that I had decided to put it in containers. But that was fun to play with as well (and felt more like 'snow') and the students really enjoyed the texture of it (and it made our classroom smell really good). I read online from someone else who had done this project that they were able to mold theirs into different shapes (they didn't say how they did it though). We were not able to do it. Once ours fell apart into little pieces, they did not stick back together again. One student even tried added water to theirs, which just ended up making a soapy wet mess. I don't know if we 'cooked' ours too long (or maybe not long enough) to do that, or even if that affects it. Maybe we will try it again another day to see if we can figure it out (or if anyone knows please let me know). 

Have you ever done this activity (or a similar activity) before?