Volcanoes!

 

Yesterday morning I sat down with Gareth and Katydid at the dining room table, so I could read Penelope Lively's In Search of a Homeland (a retelling of the Aeneid) to them while they drew.  We had gotten to the section in which the Trojans land in Sicily near Mt. Etna and encounter the cyclopes who previously had terrorized Odysseus on his voyages.  The kids weren't exactly sure what they wanted to draw, so I suggested cyclopes. I got up to change a diaper, and when I came back I found that my book had been purloined to serve as a model for cyclopes illustrations.  Since I couldn't read any more of In Search of a Homeland, I poked around in the basket which I had just made of all our Roman-related books (of which there are many) and pulled out a book on volcanoes.  Hmmm, I thought, Mt. Etna is a volcano...  

So I read about volcanoes, and we found some pictures of Mt. Etna in a few of our children's atlases, and Katydid added Mt. Etna to her picture of Polyphemus, the cyclops.  The volcano book we own is actually a bargain book I picked up at Barnes and Noble years ago, and it has a lot of nifty pictures, but it isn't so great to read aloud. So I actually ended up reading the volcano section in a Physical Science textbook, where we all learned a lot about viscosity.  Then we got up to do chores. 

But the little boys, who had been building pillow forts in the other room the whole time, had apparently been listening a little more than I realized.  As soon as the big kids got up from the table, the little boys descended upon it -- and me -- demanding to draw volcano pictures.

 

 

Here are the boys' pictures hung up on the bulletin board. Pop drew the two pictures on top -- can you tell they are volcanoes erupting? You can, right?  He's starting to do representational drawings. Big transition, there. Pip's drawings are in the middle row. While they are not technically representational, I believe that they are fantastically representational of a volcanic eruption.  I may be a little biased, but I love them -- especially that exuberant spray of yellow and orange and red, which, when placed above Farmerboy's drawing in the bottom corner, makes it look as if Farmerboy's volcano is really erupting.  Farmerboy had a little difficulty with his drawing -- all of my kids tend to be a bit (*cough*) perfectionistic -- and he wasn't sure that he wanted to put in the effort required to finish the drawing.  But when he did, he was very proud of it.  He colored the sky brown because it's full of ash, see, and there's a tree being burned up in the foreground.

Since everyone seemed to be very interested in volcanoes and since it was a gorgeous day (a little on the cool side, but in an invigorating way)... I asked the kids if they would like to build volcanoes outside and "erupt" them with baking soda and vinegar.  NOT a terribly original idea, but... a definite kid-pleaser, and something I've had in the back of my mind to do for a long time. So... we all headed out to the garden after lunch.

Gareth's volcano, with various vents and dandelions for trees.  His volcano is a composite volcano, because it has more than one opening.  Mt. Etna is also a composite volcano, with 4 main vents.

 

(You'll have to excuse the smudges in these photos... it was bright outside that we couldn't tell there were fingerprints on the lens until after the pictures had been taken.)  We added red food coloring to the vinegar, but of course you couldn't see the red except when the baking soda foamed up at first... after that, everything just sort of turned to mud.

 

 

This was a great boy activity.  They got to dig holes and simulate an explosion.  I think that Farmerboy was a little disappointed that we could not accurately simulate lava bombs, however. Nevertheless, some of us were quite disappointed when we ran out of vinegar:

Comments

[Mrs darling]

Aw poor little boy. But what cute pics the kids came up with. I lvoe the bulletin board. I finally bought one andhung it last week for our homeschool. They are jsut so handy! The dandelions on the mountains are just too cute!

[Amy]

Fun! For them at least. ;-) I love to hear what you are up to in your schooling!

[kellyi]

Hi

Just found your blog, and as a new home schooler, can confirm that you are now my new daily read :)

Very inspired by all the things you are doing/ have done and will be going through the archives for further inspiration.

Thank you!

[Lori]

those drawings are fantastic, and you can really FEEL the volcano erupting in pip's!! :^)

you need to add these to campcreekers!! http://campcreekers.tumblr.com/ love seeing your project develop!