Thursday, July 3, 2014

V for Volcanoes


See what we did for other letters in the Alphabet in Simple Science.

V for Volcano

Science Notebook Page (Click the picture to print).


     Background
As with all topics, we started off by talking about what volcanoes are.  Xander did his science notebook page and we watched some YouTube videos of volcanoes.  At first he thought they were pretty great, but I had to explain how destructive they can be.  We also watched The Magic School Bus Blows Its Top.
    

Salt Dough Volcano
Materials:
Cup or Glass
4 cups flour
4 cups salt
2 cups water
Food coloring
Vinegar
Baking soda
Dinos (optional)

I knew we couldn't do a volcano week without making the traditional baking soda and vinegar volcano.  I found a recipe for some salt dough from The Imagination Tree and got to work.  I contained the mess by using an art try.  Then we wrapped the dough around the glass and shaped it into a volcano.
Xander added a few drops of red and yellow food coloring to the bottom of the glass.
Then he "decorated" the volcano with dinosaurs.  We also put a shark at the edge of the tray to see if the lava would reach it.
I poured enough vinegar in to fill the glass about half way.  We made a packet for the baking powder out of tissue, but I think next time I'd just using a measuring cup to pour it in.  The tissue kind of got in the way.  We still got an eruption though!  Having the dinosaurs allowed us to talk about what would have happened to them if it were real lava.  All of them would have been burned (killed), since they all got wet.
Then Xander had fun playing in the mess that was left over.  He put a few dinos in the volcano.  He also loved squishing them into the wet dough.

Mentos Eruption
Materials:
Soda (supposedly diet works best?)
2-4 mentos

While reading our books about volcanoes, Xander had asked what erupt meant.  While I was able to talk about it and describe it, I decided a Mentos eruption would be fun too.  I broke a few Menots into pieces and opened up the bottle.  Getting them all in at the same time was the tough part.  I ended up putting them on a piece of paper, grabbing the two ends so they'd fall to the middle, and tipping them in.  The eruption really surprised Xander.  It happened FAST, so I didn't get many good pictures.  Glad we did this unit in the summer!


Check out my Alphabet in Simple Science Pinterest Board for more ideas!
 

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