Christian the soapmaker

I read on some mummy’s blog a year back, about her son’s experience with making soap as a gift for his teachers. I thought it was a great idea and filed it away under the long list of  “Mummy To-dos”.

It was one of the rare to-dos that I remembered to follow up on, so long after. Signing up with Soap Ministry was easy, I just gave a call and made an appointment; no deposits or internet transfers necessary. Great for the busy working mum.

We went today, for the 1145 class and were fortunate to have the sole attention of Dayana, who runs the shop with her mum.

It was such a pleasure to watch the expressions on Christian’s face as he was asked to pick the soap base (milky or clear), essential oil (sweet orange, lavender or lemongrass), colouring (purple or orange or blue). The expressions ranged mostly from joy to pride to focus.

First, he used a metal cutter to slice the soap base into strips,

transferred the strips to a measuring jug which then went into a metal pot simmering over another base of hot water.

 

While the base was melting slowly, Christian was given the opportunity to measure the vegetable glycerin (8g),

  add in vitamin E (1g) and stir in the colouring (red and yellow = orange).

He was then asked to select the scents, and taught to use the dropper to transfer the oil into the measuring jug.

He eventually warmed up to Dayana and ran around looking at the different soap samples on display, before running to the metal pots asking “Are they ready yet?!”

She laughed and was really friendly, teasing him and giving him the space and freedom to try things out himself.

We picked out some moulds which we thought his teacher might like. Roses, hearts with flowers, more roses. Dayana asked him to pick a few moulds for himself too, just in case we have enough soap base left over for ourselves and he predictably picked the car mould =7 After spraying some ethanol on the moulds,

he mixed the soap base with the vit E etc

 

and poured the mixture into the moulds. There were enough for his 7 teachers (2 english, 2 mandarin, 1 assistant, 2 berries teachers) and there was leftover to make his lollipop, car and heart shape.                 

The moulds were placed in the freezer for about 10 minutes and he got to pop the soap out of the moulds.

Ta-daaaa! The finished products.