It’s Raining Volcanoes?

Unless you are getting paid for it, who likes to dissect or explode anything-in their kitchen!  For many home schoolers, completing science experiments can be a nightmare.  Just gathering the ingredients alone is enough to make me crazy, but one of my kids really could be the absent minded professor.  So, we do them . . .

The kids and I have been studying volcanoes; I bought these books for a dollar at our local homeschooling fair:

• Volcanoes and Other Natural Disasters by Harriet Griffey
• Mountains and Volcanoes by Barbara Taylor
• Earthquakes and Volcanoes by Deborah Merrians
• Natural Disasters Volcanoes by Jacqueline Dineen

One of the reasons I enjoy using several, multi-leveled resources is that each child has as a resource he can read.  Each week, we focused on a different volcano:

• Pompeii
• Mount St. Helens
• Surtsey

During this time, I showed online videos, played volcano games, and used K-W-L graphic organizers to take notes.

Finally, it was time to make our volcanoes.  First, each child made a batch of salt dough with these ingredients:

 

While this process was going on, my oldest covered our picnic table with a blue tarp and washed out some aluminum cans; we molded the dough to these cans.  Using a small can is better unless you wish to triple batch your dough!

Now, this is where I am suppose to tell you that exploding the volcanoes was equally as much fun, but I can’t.  You see, since last Tuesday, these volcanoes have been stuck inside our shed, waiting for the sun to come out!  Wait!  I hear an Annie’s theme song coming . . .

The sun’ll come out
Tomorrow
Bet your bottom dollar
That tomorrow
There’ll be sun!

So, apparently, the bigger lesson here is to always check the weather forecast before creating volcanoes.   And . . . also keep a sense of humor when things don’t  go your way! 

 

 WARNING: These volcanoes are subject to incredible explosions; that is, ONCE the sun comes out!