Volcano-Mania!

Recently one of the little farmhands had a birthday.  As part of the festivities, we watched a National Geographic video about volcanoes.  (Ok, you might think that is strange, but when you have a lot of testosterone flowing through a very tiny body… well, volcano videos are a big deal!)

Well, the volcano bug has bitten!  We love volcanoes!  I mean, is there anything better than an exploding mountain the birthday boy has decided that life will not be complete unless he can grow up to fly a helicopter so that he can look down into volcanoes, and maybe climb down a few, too.  (Mama is not exactly happy about this ambition!)

Now in case you’ve never seen a volcano close up, the little farmhands have painted one for you:



Then a week or so after the birthday Papa the Farmer scored this at the thrift store:


$5 for a reusable volcano lab.  We prefer to call it “Mount Saint Helens.” 

It comes with a plastic cone and some plaster to make the volcano:


Here you can see we are painting it green for trees and that bit of blue on the far left is “Spirit Lake.”    We added white paint at the top to represent snow. (Yes, some volcanoes have snow at the top – how strange is that?!)  We put baking soda in that space at the top and hooked up a little tube to start pumping in the vinegar…

It started to bubble…

And bubble!

Here are some pictures of our little students seriously studying the eruption:

    

   

Wow!  Did you see that?