Inside: Soap making with kids is a fun and educational activity. Here are 3-holiday recipes with easy directions using melt-and-pour soap. These soaps are also healing and soothing to the skin.
Soap Making With Kids: The Value of a New Experience
Teaching your kids how to make soap is both an educational and fun experience. Your teens and tweens will love giving these as gifts to friends around the holidays
Have you ever made homemade soap? When I was growing up, a quiet, gray-haired woman in our neighborhood was an amateur soap maker. Her house smelled of cinnamon, clove, lemon, and lavender. Bottles, jars, and pots of unfamiliar substances lined her kitchen counter along with rows of soaps in trays and molds cooling and hardening.
As a child, the idea of making soap seemed overwhelming. Too many unfamiliar ingredients and processes I didn’t understand. I wish I knew then what I know now—all new experiences are exciting and provide a fun learning curve. What I did learn was:
Teach your kids: if they want to attempt something new—trying, experimenting, and bravery is all that’s required.
Trying something new is important for kids. It builds their confidence, creativity, and feelings of success. When faced with a difficult task, they will approach it with the attitude of “I can do this,” because they have mastered other hard tasks.
Soap Making with Kids: Beginners
Soapmaking is straightforward and easy. Ingredients are minimal, and the results are amazing! Even a three-year-old (with a little help from mom or grandma) can turn out a lovely, sweet-smelling bar of soap.
The process no longer requires using lye or cooking over a hot stove. Thanks to the melt-and-pour soap base, it’s as easy as 1-2-3. While soapmaking with kids, teach them about soapmaking basics, solving easy math equations, and learning the dos and don’ts about skin cleansers.
Soap Making with Kids: Recipes for Beginning Soap Making
Here are 2 homemade soap recipes I created for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Both recipes use a melt-and-pour soap base, which produces glycerin or see-through soap. If you want a white opaque soap, you can add titanium dioxide to make it solid white (or purchase a white base soap).
Add some dried peels, flowers, and buds to the top of the soap so that it has a dual purpose: cleaning and scrubbing the skin. I get my materials for the soap from Majestic Mountain Sage and Atlantic Spice Company.
Here are the ingredients for the soap. Both have the same soap base, and you can add titanium dioxide and goats milk to turn the soap white opaque
Watch the video before making the soap:
Thanksgiving Lemon Zinger Chamomile Soap w/Goat’s Milk
The perfect soap to make for fall.
Teach your kids to use titanium dioxide mixed with goat’s milk to make the soap opaque. Add lemon essential oil and put dried chamomile flowers and lemon peel on the top.
- 1-pound melt and pour soap base
- 1 teaspoon of titanium dioxide
- 2 Tablespoons goat’s milk or water
- Yellow cosmetic-grade dye (optional)
- ½ oz. lemon zinger fragrance oil (if using lemon essential oil, use less)
- Dried chamomile flowers
- Dried lemon peel
- Combine the goat’s milk (or water) with the titanium dioxide and let sit for 1 hour. If you're using a white soap base, you can skip this step. You use titanium dioxide to turn the glycerin melt-and-pour soap base into an opaque white soap.
- Melt the soap in the microwave at 30-second intervals until it is completely melted. Pour into a bowl
- Pour in the titanium dioxide mixture. It will turn a beautiful opaque white
- If you want the soap to have a pale-yellow color put a cosmetic-grade yellow dye in the mixture.
- Add the lemon zinger fragrance oil or lemon essential oil, and stir
- Pour into prepared square tins. To prepare the tins, put a very thin coat of Vaseline on the tins OR spray with rubbing alcohol or vodka. This will prevent the soap from sticking to the pan
- Sprinkle the chamomile flowers and lemon peel on the top of the soap. Press the buds and peels gently into the soap (if not, they will fall off after the soap is dry)
- Let dry 12-24 hours
Options and Substitutions for Thanksgiving Soap:
- Instead of chamomile flowers and lemon peel, use calendula or use a mixture of lavender buds and lavender flowers
- Instead of lemon zinger fragrance oil, try a pumpkin fragrance oil or Apple Jack fragrance oil
Christmas Peppermint Rose Soap w/Goats Milk
This is a beautiful soap to give as a gift at Christmas. Try using tart pans as a mold for the soap.
Everything about this Christmas soap spells “elegant!” Use peppermint and rose essential oils with rose petals and peppermint leaves on top. It smells wonderful and works both as soap or a scrub in the bath or shower.
- 1-pound melt and pour soap base
- 1 teaspoon of titanium dioxide
- 2 Tablespoons goat’s milk or water
- ½ oz. rose fragrance oil
- ¼ oz. peppermint essential oil
- Rosebud & petals
- Peppermint leaf
- Combine the goat’s milk (or water) with the titanium dioxide. Let sit for 1 hour. Again, the soap base is clear and you want it a white opaque soap. If you are using a white soap base, you can skip this step.
- Melt the soap in the microwave at 30-second intervals until it is completely melted. Pour into a bowl
- Pour in the titanium dioxide mixture. It will turn a beautiful opaque white
- *Add the oils (rose and peppermint)
- Pour into prepared tart pans. To prepare the pans, put a very thin coat of Vaseline on the tins OR spray with rubbing alcohol or vodka. This will prevent the soap from sticking to the pan
- Sprinkle dried rosebud and peppermint leaf on the soap while it is still a liquid. You cannot add them after the soap has set—they will not stick to the soap.
- Let dry out on the counter for 12-24 hours
- *Note: Rose oil is amazing. It helps with insomnia, depression, headaches, and allergies.
Options and Substitutions
- If you want a Christmas red soap, add 1 teaspoon cranberry fiber
- You can use other essential oils or fragrance oils to the mixture like spearmint, orange, lemon, Polynesian Red fragrance (pomegranate & cranberry), etc. Experiment!
Packaging for Gift-Giving
It’s fun to make soap but it’s even more fun to create beautiful ways to give it as a gift. Here are some suggestions:
- Use mason jars and stack the soap into a mason jar. Tie a bow or ribbon and attach a fun label
- Use cellophane bags. Put in the soap, tie with a ribbon; add a label
- Put the soap in fun cloth bags (see Paper Mart for an excellent selection of fun cloth bags) Attach a scrubber and label
- If you want to give all three of these soaps together, depending on the holiday, wrap with appropriate ribbon and labels. For instance—it’s easy to layer each of the soaps in a mason jar. The different colors make it a beautiful and fun gift! Wrap with a ribbon the color of the holiday
Last, to access the recipe to my Halloween Charcoal soap, click here
Do you have a favorite soap recipe you’d like to share? Please comment in the section below.
Want to remember this? Post “Here’s How to Make the Best Soapmaking with Kids!” to your favorite Pinterest board
FAQ’s
What is the best soap for children?
Soap that does not contain sodium-lauryl-sulfate (SLS), polyethylene glycol, phthalates, or parabens. It’s easy to make safe soap for kids using safe ingredients. Here are 3 recipes parents and kids can make together. All ingredients are natural and safe and will not harm the skin or inner organs.
What is soap made of for kids?
Soap designated just for kids usually does not have sodium lauryl sulfate (SLS), polyethylene glycol, phthalates, or parabens—all ingredients which are irritants to a child’s delicate skin and some are considered hormone disruptors. SLS dries out and irritates the skin. Parabens and phthalates (sometimes called “fragrance” on a bottle) are hormone disruptors. Try these 3 recipes to make safe soaps for your children and teens.
How do you make homemade bar soap?
Homemade bar soaps are fun to make and if you use melt-and-pour soap base you can eliminate the lye and cooking over the stove. Here are 3 recipes that use the melt-and-pour soap base with goats’ milk and safe add-ons such as essential oils, fruit peels, dried flowers and even charcoal (great for acne skin).
great
Thank you Sharlene for sharing this, I’m a class teacher and I’m about to teach my class soap making using local materials in our environment like plantain peel or palm kernel husk to form the base, how do I go about that? Thanks in anticipation. Gloria
Gloria–I’m impressed! We need more teachers like you! What are the ages of your students? I would keep it simple–and use the melt-and-pour base. This will make a clear soap, but you can always add titanium dioxide to make an opaque soap. Plantain peel and palm kernel husk… you will have to grind them into a powder to use in the soap and I would use it in the same proportions that you would use with the additive charcoal or 1 tablespoon for every pound of soap base. Also, once you have poured the soap into the molds, sprinkle additional peels and husks on top of the soap. It will make for an interesting presentation. And I would definitely let your students know the benefits of these items–I’m assuming both can be used as an exfoliate for the skin. Good luck and let me know how it all works out!
Good morning Sharlene, I wanted to make these fun soaps with my kids. I was wondering if you know of a soap base that doesn’t contain SLS. Thank you so much for all your great advice and wisdom in helping to navigate parenthood.
No, it doesn’t have SLS. If you want to make it easier–just get the white soap base–then you don’t have to use titanium dioxide. I like to use titanium dioxide with kids because when you put it into the clear soap base it dramatically changes to the solid white soap. It’s just an added learning experience for kids. And then you can use goat’s milk.
How fun is this, Sharlene! I must admit, I too have been intimidated to make soap because I thought the process was so hard. I always walk past the soap aisle in the craft store and wish I knew how to do it. Thanks to you, now I do! I’m really interested in trying the Halloween soap because of the benefits you listed for using charcoal. I have a teen that could really use it at the moment 🙂 Thank you!
I know, I was afraid to try making soap, too. I didn’t like the idea of using lye. These are super easy recipes. And, charcoal is amazing for acne. It literally pulls bacteria and debris out of the pores. You can also just use activated charcoal as a mask by getting the powder form and make it into a paste using milk (milk has lactic acid which is helpful to use as an exfoliate) and then put it on troubled areas of the skin for 10-15 minutes. Thanks for commenting! Appreciate the support!