Erupting Volcanoes

So what have we been up to lately? Besides all the holidays and new year excitment that I promise to post on here soon? Volcanoes. Volcanoes. And more volcanoes.

After finding pictures of a volcano in a book and reading about them night after night, the boys have become very interested in them. I should have known this was coming. There aren't many dinosaur books without a volcano in the background...

The first volcano activity we did was inspired by some crafts I've seen on Pinterest involving crayons and a glue gun. After fashioning a volcano out of paper and a plastic cup, we put red crayons in the hot glue gun to melt our lava.

It was a lot more difficult than I anticipated...though, this could be because we used my oldest, cheapest, worst hot glue gun. I just wasn't willing to sacrifice my good one for this.

As they added the lava, we talked about how the crayons got so hot inside the gun they melted and once on the volcano they cooled, just like magma in the earth and the lava on the surface.


That same day, Clayton "sculpted " (his word, not mine) this volcano out of a small container and playdough. He did this completely on his own with no direction from me other than, "Don't use the good playdough!" Without waiting two seconds we had to take it upstairs to make it erupt.


We did the classic baking soda and vinegar eruption.

The boys loved it. We did it over and over. When telling someone about it, Clayton said, "You know, we used that stuff that you cook with to make the volcano erupt."

We made that volcano erupt until we ran out of baking soda. And then, unbelievably, Clayton let me throw the volcano away.

A couple weeks later, we were back at it and the boys were so excited. I'm surprised they were standing still enough for me to take this picture.





After placing some crayon, sand and water in a heatproof glass container (an old measuring cup without any lines - I knew I was saving this for good reason!) we put it on the stove. As the wax got hot, it erupted through the sand. The best part of this experiment was the sound effects.
When it was over, Clayton said, "I observed that when it started to erupt it made a sound." We heard sounds like a pot of water makes just before it starts to boil that got louder as the wax broke through the sand. Levi said, "The yellow went up!" Though not as dramatic as I would have liked, it was still cool. If I had used regular wax, not a crayon, I think it would have worked much better.





Our last, and final, experiment involved water, yeast and hydrogen peroxide. While a baking soda and vinegart reaction is fast, this reaction is much slower. I'm so glad we used a clear bottle so we could see it building inside. Slowly, slowly it bubbled out of the soda bottle. What was really cool was that this reaction also produced heat. Everyone was able to feel how warm it was. The boys were fascinated by the bubbles so we spent a bit of time talking about how gas also erupts out of volcanoes.
At the end of this experiment, Levi stated, "It didn't explode. All it did was blow bubbles out!"




Later the boys cut out volcanoes and glued on tissue paper for the lava. Levi did so well cutting on some lines I drew and he did the tissue paper all on his own. He was so proud. Clarey just loved feeling the lava on both the crayon volcanoes and tissue paper. Other than that, she could care less about volcanoes. Our next activity - an edible volcano. I think we'll wait for Cyle to be home so he can help eat it!

A few comments:

Did you know that there are some volcanoes that are flat? And fire comes out of them when they are flat?... I saw that in that book. - Levi

Mom, I just know that is a volcano exploding! It has to be. It really, really is a volcano. Don't you see all that smoke? - Clayton, one morning as we were driving down to Jackson and saw the steam coming out of a smokestack at plant in Ste. Gen county