Volcanoes are a Blast

Discovering Volcanoes was a prominent base aid for our study of volcanoes as we continued with our geology unit. We used several of the activity pages for our notebooks. This book focuses mostly on the volcanic areas in the Northwest of the United States, but it also covers the Ring of Fire, types of volcanoes, the anatomy of a volcano, and lava basics. We read additional books on Mount St. Helens, Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, and Pele, the volcano goddess of Hawaii.

This is my favorite artistic rendition of Pele. I love how her hair is pahoehoe lava.

Because we lived in the Seattle area when the children were younger, most of them have been to Mount St. Helens--but the youngest ones don't remember it. I pulled out the photos as well as all of the educational things I purchased there.  We watched the DVD Fire Mountain:  The Eruption and Rebirth of Mount St. Helens.  We put together a jigsaw puzzle of the mountain before, during, and after the eruption. We examined ash and pumice and lava rock (the lava rock actually came from Hawaii) and saw for ourselves that pumice, a rock, does indeed float.

In 1980, when Mount St. Helens blew, there was an appropriate LDS General Conference talk titled, "Seven Events of Great Consequence" given by J. Thomas Fyans.  After learning all about Mount St. Helens, we listened to the talk, reviewed the printed version, and created these notebook pages.

Because I recently flew to Anchorage, Alaska via Seattle, Washington, I also had photos to show the kids that I took from the plane. The Cascade Mountain Range is huge and lovely, but from the plane you can easily see the volcano mountains standing out, larger than the others. In this photo you can see Mount Rainier, Mount St. Helens, Mount Adams, and even Mount Hood in the far distance.

A few years ago we took a field trip to Craters of the Moon National Monument.  I wanted to go there again during this unit, but it's a good few hours away and we didn't have the time. So, we looked through all the pictures we took from our last trip there, read up on why and how it is there, and then made notebook pages with a map from the above mentioned book, photos from our past trip (this one the kids did remember) and summaries the kids each wrote of their reading about the geology of the area.

We watched a couple of videos about Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, lava, and volcanologists. I really do recommend watching videos rather than just looking at still pictures or books because it's the only way to get the full effect with the sound and movement of the lava. The explosions are cool, of course, but so is everything else lava does. My husband and I have been to the island of Hawaii and biked around the volcano and toured HVNP, so I also had personal photos and experience to share.

Our read-aloud chapter book at this time was Rage of Fire by Gloria Skurzynski and Alane Ferguson. It is another in the "Mysteries in Our National Parks" series. (I'm still not sure what I think of these books. We've read two in the series now and I just can't decide. The mysteries are interesting and exciting enough, and the settings are perfect. There are some rough subjects, though, as a continuing element of these stories is that the family of main characters take in foster children from various backgrounds who have had bad experiences. Part of the premise of the books is that the children in the "blessed" family are learning more about the lives of the less fortunate and how to appreciate and get along with them as they come in and disrupt their life. The backgrounds are indeed rough, and there is a lot of conflict between characters. So far I haven't finished a book feeling like it was a really great read.)

Visual and Language Arts were incorporated with a volcano collage and volcano haiku. First I introduced them to the concept of collage and we looked at many different samples online. I printed several 8.5 x 11" photos of active volcanoes for the kids to cut up and use in their art.  Then I reviewed/taught haiku poetry to them (for my youngest two this was new) and everyone fiddled with it using various subjects until I said they each needed to write a volcano haiku.  One of them wrote two, and one of them had too much to say to limit it to three lines and really wanted his volcano poem to not be haiku.

I felt a little guilty that there were two active volcanoes in the news during this time. It made for great learning, but it was at the expense of others. Mount Ontake in Japan was of course a topic of discussion, especially why there was no warning.  And the Puna lava flow from Kilauea in Hawaii continues to be news.

Iceland is also a volcanic hot spot with current volcanic activity.  I assigned the kids to research and write a report on Iceland.

Finally, we used up 2 gallons of vinegar and a huge, huge bag of baking soda making volcanoes in the back yard. As fun as every kid thinks this is, it isn't just for fun. The vinegar/baking soda reaction releases carbon dioxide, which is one of the main gases released in a real volcanic eruption. So there is a correlation. We learned that we owe our atmospheric gases to volcanic eruptions and that they are a necessary part of this life-producing and life-sustaining planet.  Further, we experimented with pressure. We used plastic bottles as our magma chambers and built mud mountains around them. We let the lava flow without a lid, then we tried it with the lid screwed halfway on, then with the lid screwed on completely but with a few holes nailed into it. The kids did more videoing of the eruptions than picture taking, and by the end we were all covered in soda and vinegar because we were able to create some huge eruptions due to enormous gas pressure. (P.S. I added food coloring to get a more orangey lava color.)

This experiment also demonstrated the creation of lava rock with all its holes.
The carbon dioxide bubbles left pock marks in the mud just as they do in lava rock.

In this photo you can see the lid being blown off the bottle.
The mountain is literally blowing its top off.