Pre K A Day: VOLCANOES

Before we begin:

1. I am not a certified educator. I am a stay at home mom. My husband, who is a qualified educator, is not involved in my lesson plans, and, therefore, can not be held responisble for anything where I legitimately earn an 'F'.

2. Should you choose to duplicate our lessons or activities at home, you do so at your own risk.

3. You agree, by reading this, to fully hold me harmless should you decide to educate your children at home.

I will periodically record for you, via post, lessons we do so that you may, if you want, do them in your home. This first lesson idea actually came to me via my neighbor. We all learn from one another. This blog seeks to further that goal of being a community built on sharing and learning.

VOLCANOES!

Materials you will need:

1 paper cup (any size, but a large one will work best)
tin foil
clay or playdoh
vinegar
baking soda
food coloring
baking sheet

Step 1:

Construct a "volcano" by folding foil over the mouth of your cup and bunching it at the bottom. Place your volcano on a baking sheet.

Step 2:

Roll out clay or playdoh (is that a trademark name? is that going to be my error numero uno?) and cover your volcano gently. You can add trees and other things if you want to be cute about it. In the real world, just getting the 2 4 year olds to roll out the clay was enough to make me want to punch myself in the face, thus the odd semi-covered volcano. Exhibit A:

Ben covered his ears and Alya left the room, because, although I explained it was noiseless, they were convinced the "interruption" (what they called the eruption) would be loud.

Step 3:

Put several teaspoons of baking soda into your volcano. In a separate cup combine vinegar and food coloring (we started with red and the changed to other colors for the 29th and 46th eruptions....I like to exaggerate).

Step 4:

Pour vinegar mixture into cup slowly enough that you can see the reaction begin to happen. You can add more vinegar mixture and baking soda for more eruptions. Be ready, your regular kid will want to do it all day! Your oddly paranoid kid will flit in and out of the room screaching and flailing about spastically. The truth is what it is. I love Alya, I just don't understand Alya. The one time I tried to forcibly hold her against her will to watch an eruption, I felt bad, and let her go before Ben poured the vinegar.

Step 5:

Make it educational. We discussed dormant volcanoes:

Active volcanoes:

We talked about magma (I got under the kitchen table) and lava (I jumped out from under the table and up into the air!). We discussed plate shifts and the creation of mountains and volcanoes and talked a bit about the forces that cause the volcanoes to erupt.