Volcano Art and Science Experiment

A few weeks ago my husband was stuck in Ireland when the volcano was exploding. We spent a lot of time around our house talking about volcanoes. Here is a little related art project and science experiment we tried out today (found here)... since my son is still interested in volcanoes.

Materials Needed:(for art project) brown paper, large white drawing paper, markers, scissors, glue, tissue paper (we only had yellow and orange- red would also be nice).

Directions:
1. Draw a volcano or two on brown paper.

2. Cut them out and decide where you want them to go.

3. Add glue to the back of the volcanoes.

4. Flatten the volcanoes down.

5. Rip up tissue paper for the lava.

6. Add some Elmer's glue to the top and sides of the volcano.

7. Press the tissue paper onto the glue.

Here my little guy is making his eruption sounds (he's not really mad).

All done... now onto the experiment!

Materials Needed: playdough (that you don't mind not using again), big platter, vinegar (we only had red wine vinegar and it worked fine), baking soda, a plastic spoon, and red food coloring.

Directions:
1. Shape your volcano out of playdough. We made sure to put a big hole in the middle for the lava to come out.

2. Gather your materials to create an eruption.

3. Add some baking soda and red food coloring to the inside of the volcano.

4. Pour the vinegar inside the hole and watch the volcano erupt. We started out small and then made our volcano erupt more and more.

The red food coloring helps make it easier to see the lava.

Here's a video of our volcano exploding (by this point we'd added a lot of baking soda and vinegar, so the volcano was very full).

Once we were done with our experiment, we spent some time on the Discovery Kids Volcano Explorer website. You can create your own virtual volcano. Be prepared to do this again and again. You can adjust the viscosity and gas levels, so the fun is endless because each volcano you make can be different.

We don't have any toddler approved volcano books (just books for 2nd and 3rd graders), so we mostly looked at pictures and talked about what we saw.

No Time for Flashcards has some fun volcano books mentioned here.

We also thought this Volcano Song video was pretty funny (mostly for the images because the words were too advanced)

The best part of this activity is that we already had all the materials at our house! Have fun erupting!!