Activities to try at home – Moldable Soap Earth

  1. Make your self some mold-able soap following the instructions in this link, using cornflour, liquid soap and almond oil.
  2. Dye your soap a range of different colours by adding a few drops of food dye (yellow for there inner core, orange for the outer core, red for the mantle and blue/green for the crust).
  3. Make a small sphere to be the solid metal inner core that sits right in the middle of our planet, by rolling your yellow soap into a very small ball.
  4. Carefully wrap some orange soap around your yellow inner core to make the liquid metal outer core, and roll into a smooth sphere.
  5. Wrap a thick red layer of soap around your orange core to represent the thick rocky layer of the Earth’s mantle.
  6. Finally flatten out a layer of blue green soap as thin as you can and wrap around the outside of your Earth – this represents the thin brittle crust of the Earth that we all live on.
  7. Carefully slice your globe in half to reveal the inner structure of the Earth, as seen in the picture above.

N.B As this activity uses almond oil as a moisturizing agent those with nut allergies should not undertake this activity. In this instance, it may be possible to switch out almond oil to another oil that is beneficial to skin and has less chance of allergic reactions.

Looking for some fun ways to learn more about the Earth?  Why not try out some of these activities you can do at home or in a classroom!

Link to Moldable Soap Earth activity.
Link to Layered Earth Pudding Cup activity
Link to Slinky Wave activity
Link to Lego Layers of the Earth activity
Link to Pop-up Earth Card activity
Link to Knitted Earth activity
Link to Smartphone Seismometer activity
Link to Earthquake Wave Race activity