Glycerin Melt and Pour...Soap Making in the Classroom...

Creating groovy soap designs, with glycerin melt and pour soap base, is such a fun thing to do in the classroom.  Children will love the hands-on experience and the process.

Often I give the children a design brief to work towards.  If you're new to making soap with a class it's a good idea to limit the range of smells/essential oils children can use when they make their soap.  When I first made soap with children they had a choice of these essences: lemongrass, lavender, raspberry, vanilla and strawberry.

Use the web to find photos of hand-made glycerin soaps and show these to the children for inspiration.   I've also used YouTube to show children episodes from Soap Queen TV.  Some of these episodes are very informative and really good to watch if you're a beginner.

Glycerin melt and pour soap base can be purchased as clear or as a white base.  Silicon baking moulds are just the best thing for making this type of soap.  It's a good idea to purchase a medium sized microwave glass jug for melting the soap base.  Remember once your silicon moulds have been used for soap making they can no longer be used for baking.

Soap making can be weaved into so many areas of the curriculum.  Below are some of the tasks children could complete as part of a unit on soap making.

To see more soap making in the classroom click here.

To watch a movie on soap making click here.

Technology/The Arts:

• View different types of soap packaging
• Create their own soap packaging, for the soap they've made.  
• Explore what colours could be used for their packaging and logo design. 
• Make promotional, advertising posters to promote the selling of their soap.
• Create a new smelling soap.

Literacy:

• View adverts for beauty products and explore the descriptive language used.  
• Write an advert for the soap they've created.  
• Develop catchy names for their soap.
• Create a soap advert. 

Maths/Statistics:

• Carry out their own market research. 
• Children could do some sampling to find out what essential oils other children/family members like the most.  
• Children can compare this data as a class and decide what range of essential oils they can use in their soap making.
• Work out the cost to make their soap and how much each bar of soap needs to be sold for to make a profit.

Social Sciences:

• The impact of deforestation in Sumatra, for the planting of Palm oil plantations.  
• What other beauty products use palm oil.

This is a snapshot of a template you could use to get children started.

Soap packaging exploration.

Another template for soap exploration.