Volcanoes

The Pre-Interview:

Seth: Volcanoes blast. They have lots of lava in them. And gas. They make special kinds of rocks. They are really hot. They are red. They can kill people.

Hannah: They erupt. They can kill people. There was a volcano called Mt. Vesuvius, and it erupted on a town called Pompeii and Pompeii was buried in all the ash.

We talked about the layers of the earth and how magma is in the core...we talked briefly about fault lines and the plates rubbing together. I showed them how magma comes up through cracks and finally erupts out of a volcano. We looked at maps to guess where the most volcanoes would be. We talked about how lava cools and the different kinds of igneous rock left behind. We talked about the difference between active, dormant, and extinct volcanoes. We talked about the damage caused by volcanoes...by lava, ash, etc. Then we talked about the benefits of volcanoes, in farmland, natural heating, etc.

And on to the fun part...

We built a volcano out of salt dough.

Ingredients:
1 cup of salt
1 cup of flour
1/2 cup of water (may add more)

Instructions:
In a large bowl, combine the salt and the flour
Make a well in the salt/flour mixture and add the water
Knead until smooth and shape into a ball
When not in use, wrap in plastic or store in an airtight container
HINT: To get a softer dough you can add more flour. Adding more salt will lend a more granulous affect.

I added some red and yellow food coloring to give it a little color, but it was still pretty light. Then I added red food coloring to some elmer's glue and made the little drips down the side of the volcano...just so it looked COOL! We built the volcano around a small bottle. In the bottle I put some baking soda, a little water, some red food coloring, and a squirt of dish soap (to make it bubbly). Then we added the vinegar when we wanted it to erupt. It was perfect because we could erupt it over and over again.

When Katy and Cru woke up from their naps, we decided to head up the road a little bit to an area that has quite a few extinct volcanoes. I let the kids walk around on the lava beds...we would have hiked to the top of the volcano, but it was well over 100 degrees, and I didn't want to kill them, so we just examined the lava rock and talked about how it was formed. We drove far enough up the road to be able to see down on the top of the volcano a bit and see how it showed the center of the volcano. They thought it was all very cool, and Seth would have been to the top of the volcano had I not been the voice of reason. Maybe we'll do it this winter sometime.

Post-Interview:

Hannah: Inside the earth there is lots of lava. Earthquakes are made by two plates smashed together. The lava comes through cracks in the ground and comes out volcanoes.

Seth: Volcanoes can cover up the earth with ash. There's lava under the earth called magna (he meant magma). Some volcanoes are extinct, some will go again. Lava turns to stone.

Next Week: The Human Body