Hands-on Learning: Ecological Products - Castelli International School

‘Il Sapone del Bianconiglio’ is a small organisation that visits schools, conducting fun, educational workshops that help to build greater awareness of how items we use regularly can be produced in a more environmentally-friendly manner. Their recent visit here proved to be extremely popular, as pupils of all ages in the elementary school had the opportunity to make products we use everyday, using exclusively natural products. Grades 1-4 got to make toothpaste, whilst Grade 5 pupils made soap. It was a thoroughly enjoyable series of workshops for all involved and we are very grateful to Tiziana and Valeria for visiting our school and teaching us so much!

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Soap Workshop recounted by Iola

7th October 2019 Soap

This morning we did no work! Well, yes, we did do work but no SCHOOLWORK!!! At school we did a workshop to learn how to make a very eco-friendly soap. It was really exciting!!!

We had to bring a lot of stuff for this occasion: an old T-shirt, an empty milk carton, a shoe-box, an old towel and ten euro for the ingredients. Two kind ladies, called Valeria and Tiziana, from the company Sapone Bianconiglio, came to teach us. They were very experienced and making soap was their job.

First we got an introduction about what to do and what the dangers were and stuff like that. We also received our other equipment: two jugs (a big one and a smaller one), a spatula, a pair of rubber gloves, face masks, and a pair of glasses to protect our eyes. We worked in pairs. I was with Giordana.

First, we weighed 150g of water and 60g of sodium hydroxide.Then we put on our glasses, gloves and masks. We poured the sodium hydroxide into the water. It was INCREDIBLE!!!!! There was a chemical reaction. The water that before was a normal temperature, almost cold, suddenly became very hot and we needed our masks so as not to breath in the toxic steam that the solution emitted. Then we mixed it slightly and took it outside to cool down. While it was becoming colder we had break-time.

Then we weighed 500g of olive oil and got our solution which meanwhile had cooled down and poured it in the olive oil. We mixed the substances carefully with an electric mixer and the substance, which before had been very liquidy, with the power of the mixer had become much thicker. We then poured the now thick substance into the empty milk carton. We had to use a carton which did not have aluminium on the inside otherwise there would be another chemical reaction!!! So then we put the milk carton in the shoebox and wrapped a towel around it to keep our solution warm.

Tomorrow we will open our boxes and see if our solutions have become solid. Even if they are solid, we will still not be able to use the soap because the oil and sodium hydroxide have not mixed properly yet so we need to wait for a month before using it.

I can’t wait until we can see our soaps fully solid. I enjoyed this experience a lot and I feel like I learned a lot too.

Iola - Grade 5

Read Iola's writeup