Teach Soap

Hello!

I'm a serious newbie to soap making (I'm currently looking around my town to see if I can find the supplies here or if I have to order supplies- I haven't even made my first batch yet). My main question is, has anyone done very small recipes with kids? Once I get some practice with CP, I'm hoping to create a spring lab for our local homeschool group. I'm the science lab person (which works since I'm a chemist). I'm trying to do as many real life science experiments as possible. Making soap seems to be a great chemistry lab- plus parents could turn it into a unit study involving history etc if they wished.

Most saponification labs I find online are a hot process, but I'm not about to go out and buy a bunch of hot plates for a lab (very limited budget for these labs). That's why I'm leaning towards CP. For a lab, I would need to scale it down to a single bar recipe. Does anyone have a really really small batch recipe they like that might work well with kids?

Also, what minimum age would you consider having a kid do a CP batch (with an adult helping. A parent sticks around and is the "lab partner" if required).

Thanks for any help and for putting up with newbie questions like mine!

If it were me, I wouldn't even consider doing this with anyone that is not at least high school age. It's a law suit waiting to happen when you're working with active lye. Any recipe can be scaled down to fit your needs. I've never done anything less than a pound.

I honestly would not work with kids unless they were my own. My 12 yr old helped me with a batch one day. I let her measure the oils, melt them, etc but nothing to do with the lye. She absolutely loved it but we were very careful while doing it.

_________________
Haven

I agree...
(Kids or Pets) + Lye = accident waiting to happen

You might consider doing a CP demo in front of a class. But I would not do that without first giving a lesson on the dangers of caustic substances and demonstrating proper lye safety procedures (gloves, goggles, protective clothing, MSDS sheet). It might be cool for them to see how the lye raises water temperature so drastically... but not up close. Maybe a video? Or you could use pre-mixed lye to eliminate at least one potential hazard. But again only for a demo... not for kids to handle.

You will also find it problematic to scale a recipe down to one bar size. The smaller the batch the more exact your measurements must be. 500 grams is the smallest I do which is maybe 4-5 bars.

Perhaps you could do a CP demo and then let them play with M&P soaps... since M&P base generally starts as CP.

_________________
- Mickey!

Well I guess I am the wild one here but I have done it with a group of 12 year old girls and a home school family that had kids from age 4 - 14. It is a great home school science project in my opinion. We talked about the history and a very brief chemistry thing (I had a big age group) and how soap works and then I showed them lots of different kinds of oils and talked about their properties in soap. Then the 4, and 6 year old did the measuring of water and oils and the 10 and 14 year old worked with the lye and did the blending. I made them wear long gloves, googles, and apron and long sleeves and it was very safe. I talked about the dangers of lye and they were all respectable and appropriate. A responsible 10 year old is probably the youngest I would allow work with lye. This project can be tailored to all sorts of ages but take their personalities into consideration. All these kids were very well behaved. We had a 2:1 ration kid to adult and it was fine. If there is a kid who is rambunctious, full of energy and doesn't think through things before he moves, he might only get to measure stuff no matter the age. But if a child follows directions well and has good coordination and movements, then maybe they can be more involved. I say go for it. Definitely explain the danger of lye and have heavy parental involvement if you are worried.

If you are on a budget you can make some good soap with just crisco, olive oil, and canola. I started out with that but it was a goat milk soap - you can do it without goats milk though. Here is the recipe

12 oz - crisco
4.5 - olive oil
5 oz canola
12 oz goat milk
3 oz lye

I would run this through a lye calculator because I think this is no superfat but it had goats milk so it wasn't a problem (it had extra fat). If I were doing it with water I would superfat it at least 5% and decrease the water - way too much liquid. People say if you have more then 10% of canola then your soap is more prone to go rancid - I have never had a problem with this recipe. I now work with all sorts of oils but this is still a good recipe - especially if you want to make soap from materials from your local store. I have gotten 100% lye from a hardware store in their drain deglogging section. Make sure it says 100% lye though. Good luck!!

Oh, and you can cut down that recipe as small as you want. I believe that made 8 4 oz bars - or filled a 2# loaf or soap mold.

I wouldn't do it. Especially not if I were a chemist and could be held to a higher standard of responsibility. Sorry, but we live in a very litigious society and I really like my home and the things for which my husband and I have worked hard.

Too much can go wrong with kids and lye. I second Melt & Pour. If you're intent on going ahead with CP then I suggest having an Attorney draw up a liability waiver for *all* parents to sign.

Welcome to the forum!

_________________
Irena
Closed minds are like faulty parachutes; they refuse to open.

Yup. You can talk about lye and the chemical reaction and all that good stuff without them actually USING the lye. You could even demonstrate everything right up to adding the lye, and then already have a block of cured (or semicured) CP soap log. That way they know "what happens". At the end of your lecture, I would say go with the M&P and have a very fun and low-risk lab.

I'm paranoid...I don't even let my 8 year old come into the kitchen to get water when I'm soaping.
I wouldn't do it. Lye is dangerous stuff.

_________________
http://www.inarubathandbody.com

I have to ditto---- the accident factor here is too serious, it can't be undone. Even watching--- if the lye container spilled onto a little one.....awfull......... I have 5 kids and 2 grandkids--- I've never made soap around them until they were teenagers. M&P is a great kid project.

_________________
You may be only one person to the world, but you may also be the world to one person

For older students that are studying chemistry, the Lye-Water and Lye-Oil reactions broach quite a wide range of topics which makes it a great subject for discussion. (i.e. What exactly is a Strong/Weak Base and a Strong/Weak Acid, introduction to salts, PH, etc.) You can even discuss and demonstrate the effect of temperature on PH using plain water if you have a decent PH meter.

HOWEVER

Most Chemistry Lab Classes that allow students to use corrosives such as this Strong Base (Lye) take place around the Junior year of High school so 16-17 years old. These labs will be equipped with a fume hood, eye wash station, and emergency shower and the all important insurance rider. -- Being careful is no substitution for being prepared.

For the younger crowd, this is a good opportunity to teach proper mass and volume measurement techniques with the balance (scale), and graduated cylinders.

For very small batches (like a single bar) precise measurements are essential since a 1 gram error will be seriously magnified in scale. How good is your balance? Do you have calibration weights? Another good teaching opportunity.

Good luck! Have fun! Be Safe!

I'm a homeschooler with a 10 and 8 year old and I wouldn't let them play with lye. I let them cook, sew, iron, etc. and I won't allow them around lye. I've dripped it on my pant leg and proceeded to strip down to my underwear in the kitchen. I also somehow splashed a few drops on my face and it started burning so much that I stuck my face under the faucet! And I wear long sleeves, goggles, and rubber gloves. Accidents can still happen and I would feel awful if a child got burned. Their skin is so much more sensitive than adults. Maybe discuss the making of soap, the history and chemistry behind it and then do M&P. They would think that was lots of fun and more hands on even for the younger kids. At the end you could whip out the M&P and say this is soap now let's do something fun with it. Soap balls might be fun too. You could do white ones and make soap snowmen.

Wow! The response to this is amazing! Thanks to everyone for their thoughts!

More detailed thoughts I've had...

I was thinking no younger than 12 and even then only with specific parental permission and assistance (I was going to make them do a safety form similar to what I used to do with my college students). Everyone already has to wear goggles and we're just doing boring simple things so far (I'm more paranoid than I may sound). For this I'd make them wear long sleeves/pants as well as a lab coat or apron (closed toe shoe, glasses only/no contacts and all the other standard lab safety stuff still applies). Gloves too. There is a place we can use with an eye wash and emergency shower. There are no fume hoods but it's a very open well ventilated area- I'll have to practice the lab there first before I make that final call though.

I have a couple scales and they go to the mg level (one does better but just one scale would cause students to rush and that's the last thing I want). So this would depend on the recipe working with mg level measurements.

I think I would actually premix the NaOH solution and I would control it. I'll do something else to show them exothermic reactions.

Essentially, this is meant to be a high school lab (but if parents wants I'll allow mature jr high students to do it too). If it doesn't work out or if the kids start acting like maniacs in the slightest during our other labs, I'll just drop this one from my potential lab list. If everything works out and we do the lab, the younger kids would have something else that month. I just really don't like just showing them and telling them about something. If I can't have them actually do the reaction, I'll just skip it.