Do you know how sometimes you feel warm when you play outside under the sun and sometimes you feel cold when you go inside an air-conditioned room on a hot day? That's because heat is either getting inside or leaving your body.
Similarly, when a chemical reaction happens and it either absorbs or releases heat, we call it an endothermic or exothermic reaction. An endothermic reaction is like when you eat an ice cream and your body feels cold because the heat from your body is being used up to melt the ice cream.
In a more scientific way, an endothermic reaction is a type of chemical reaction that requires heat energy to be absorbed from the surroundings, which means the temperature of the surroundings decreases. This type of reaction is characterized by a positive change in enthalpy, which is a fancy word for the heat change that takes place during a reaction.
Examples of endothermic reactions include the dissolution of ammonium nitrate in water, which is often used in instant cold packs, or the reaction between baking soda and vinegar, which also feels cold to the touch.
So, in summary, an endothermic reaction is when a chemical reaction requires heat energy from the surroundings to take place, causing the temperature of the surroundings to decrease.