Yeah!!! We’ve been prepping for weeks and asking all kinds of questions. The problem wasn’t what do we want to learn about. The problem was what one thing can we narrow it down to? Ronin has checked out about every single book on Mt. Vesuvius from the library. So we decided that instead of picking just one part in true unschool fashion we would show how one question led to the next! We’ve been messing about with rock hunts, explosions, and sorting and categorizing for my little Geologist all week long. Me? Well I have been snapping pictures and following along right behind.
First the idea: Let’s recreate what it looked like the day the volcano exploded. He chose to use clay as the medium for his volcanoe artistry.
The black structure is a replica of Mt. Vesuvius. To left is a little house for the people. In the back right corner is the bear’s house. (Because everyone wants bears for their neighbors.) In front of the bears house is the lake because according to Ronin everyone should have a lake to look into.
Next, the fun stuff! Ronin wanted to make a volcanoe and “Make it EXPLODE! And I want to make the explosion YELLOW!” Point taken and noted little dude. Question? How do we make it explode? Classic answer…
Vinegar and Baking Soda
Boom! We not only made it explode once, but until the entire box of baking soda was gone and 3/4 of the large bottle of vinegar. I’m glad that I took pictures because the clay is now a smelly mound that we refer to as “the mass formerly known as Ronin’s volcano”.
Exploding volcanoes made him ask questions about the nature of a rock. Volcanoes are cool, but if magma is soft, are all rocks that soft and “flowy” too? That led us to take a rock hunt and find some specimens to test. Questions like… How hard is a rock? So we put each rock through a series of tests.
Thanks Moh for creating a scale!
Can it be scratched?
We sorted, washed and grouped each rock until the little guy was happy. Then we added them together and counted how many we had tested. Then he took away the ones that he thought we too “ugly” and we released them back into the wild.
Thanks Evie we had a great time exploring!
Filed under: Let's Blow Up the Kitchen, OMG, you Unschool! | Tagged: homeschooling, science experiments, volcanoes
I love it.
The rock classification looks fun too. 
Great eruption!
You know, I’ve been considering taking the fam for a hike up the side of Vesuvius in response to Tiff’s challenge – I could take lots of pics for your superhero, if he’d like.
Wow! Very cool! We had an eruption, too but not on purpose. LOL
I can’t wait to show Iain the rock classification. He’s all about “crystals”, as he calls them.
Thanks for doing the science fair with us!
Jenn-Yes!!! He would love it!! That would be so amazing!
Evie-Thank-you so much, we had a blast.
No pun intended.