Recipe For A Volcano Eruption!

One lazy Sunday afternoon a few weeks ago, we decided to ditch all homework, and experiment with some messy, hands-on fun. Since we were still dabbling around with our "Earth Sciences" homelearning theme (we had completed the "Space" theme slightly earlier), we decided to create an erupting volcano.

Step 1: Mould the volcano out of an empty, old plastic water bottle and aluminium foil. The volcano would look a lot better if we could layer brown playdoh or clay over the foil, but we were all way too lazy to do that! Hence, we had a silver volcano that looked like it could reside on any planet in outer space! 

Step 2: The "ingredients" for a red-hot, fiery volcanic eruption!

Vinegar + baking soda + red/orange paint = a blazing eruption :)

Step 3: Mix some red/orange paint into a cup of vinegar  

Step 4: Put in 1 to 2 teaspoons of baking soda into the volcanic crater (into the "throat" of a volcano). 

Step 5: Pour the cup of reddish vinegar into the throat of the volcano, and wait for a swift, frothy eruption!

Throughout the messy fun, I took the opportunity to explain the various parts of a volcano to them, and described how and why volcanoes erupted in real life. Little Bee had firmly informed me she would avoid going to Hawaii, which used to be one of her favourite countries, because it is a land rife with volcanoes! 

The Bees were thrilled during the whole session, and had such fantastic fun that they repeated the whole experiment twice until we ran out of vinegar (really rapidly!). 

Thereafter, they spent almost an hour doing nothing but pouring water and paint into the volcano, having crazy fun all by themselves, shrieking and giggling in delight. They created a complete mess but I did not stop them as it was such a glorious retrieve when I could read a book in a quiet corner for an hour :)