Soap Balls

For father's day gifts in our classroom we are making soap balls. I have made these in the past and they've worked really well. Since it's the end of the year, we are using all our leftover soap bars from the classroom for this project.

We have a little hand crank grinder that niftily attaches to the table and today, children had the option to pair up and grate pre-cut soap cubes. This went very well, one child would load up the grater and apply pressure, and the other would turn the crank. Other children used regular graters which are trickier and mistakes so painful. We grated about 10 bars of soap in total, for making about 10 balls.

Each child can choose to add oatmeal, fresh rosemary, or an essential oil to their soap. They may also choose a color for their soap (food coloring- more opportunity for color mixing.) For a soap ball, about 1/3 cup oatmeal would be enough, and a teaspoon of chopped rosemary. The food coloring is used very sparingly and diluted in about 5 tablespoons of water. All the ingredients are mixed together and then the children just begin to press the soap together into a large ball.

It will take about 2 days for the balls to dry. Today we grated the soap, tomorrow we will make the balls.

Tomorrow you will see the result.



Soap Balls:

(per child)
1 bar of soap (pretty much any kind, but the soft milky ones do work best)
5 TBSP water

optional:
1/3 C Oatmeal
1 tsp chopped rosemary or other hardy herbs
3 drops of essential oils
1-2 drops food coloring

(soap ball pictured is from Biome)