It’s Volcano Day!
First, I pulled up a great short video about the earth science behind volcanic eruptions.
I assembled our ingredients and brought everything outside to the deck. We used the vase as the center of our volcano. (If I were doing this again, I’d use something a little bit shorter.) The directions I found online worked great.
I filled the vase most-of-the-way full with warm water. Jonas added red food coloring, and Susannah put in 6 drops (okay, one generous squirt) of dish detergent. I poured a heap of baking soda into a small ramekin, and each kid added one tablespoon to the vase.
The final step is to slowly pour vinegar into the vase. I used apple cider vinegar because it’s what I had on hand, and look at that lovely “lava flow!”
After the lava finally quit flowing, we wrote about our experiment. Susannah used the large doodle pad and I wrote her words; I was really suprised at some of what she retained! Jonas wrote on lined paper and illustrated on construction paper. His text said, “Volcanos. Do not tuch lava becus its hot. What we yoused. We pute bakeing soda in the volcano then we put the drit on the vase. Then we put the vinagr. Eruption lava.”
They had so much fun, and it was so simple, that I think I’ve decided to have a Scientific Summer. It wouldn’t be too hard to pull ideas for 8-10 experiments and do one each week. If we write & draw about each one, we’d have a neat little book by the time school starts back in the fall!