Monday, April 11, 2011

Making Volcanoes on the Beach

The girls and I love to make volcanoes on our beach! (see here and here) This is the 3rd Spring/Summer that we've done this fun activity, and it was just as fun as ever.

To make the volcano, O(4) filled a plastic bottle 3/4 full with lake water. We then built the volcano around the bottle using beach sand. O put 2 tablespoons of baking soda and several drops of food coloring into the bottle. She then poured white vinegar into the volcano, and we watched the eruption.

This is the first year that we've had red lava...since O's favorite color is blue, we always have blue lava. This time she wanted the lava to be red, and she told me that red is the "proper" color of lava. Can you tell she's been studying volcanoes at school? :)

We erupted our volcano 3 times, so that E(1) would have a chance to measure the baking soda and pour the vinegar. She LOVED it!

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8 comments:

  1. StephanieApril 11, 2011 at 10:38 PM

    Oh! that is fun! Its so much easier to do it on the beach! We tried it in the house and it was pretty messy! Not to mention it was hard to find enough dirt in the cold! :)

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  2. Simply MontessoriApril 11, 2011 at 10:39 PM

    This is awesome! My kids are very into volcanoes right now, we'd love to do this. Do you know if it works with salty beach water?

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  3. JacquelineApril 12, 2011 at 12:06 AM

    What a great idea to do it on a beach! We're going to have to do that here as well.

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  4. Having Fun at HomeApril 12, 2011 at 12:09 AM

    Neat idea- love how the sand would make it look more authentic!

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  5. AnonymousApril 12, 2011 at 12:36 PM

    Have you tried Soda and Mentos? Different science lesson, but more dramatic.

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  6. AmyApril 12, 2011 at 5:51 PM

    Seth just watched that video 5 times! I love E's giggle in the background! I'd like to try the mentos sometime.

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  7. Elle Belles BowsApril 13, 2011 at 3:08 PM

    So much fun and a great way to spend the afternoon!

    Kerri

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  8. tiny tornadoesApril 14, 2011 at 12:06 PM

    Love this idea!!

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