Lab Day

Today was a "lab day" for school. Except...we don't have a lab, but we had fun anyway. :-) We talked about volcanoes today: the different shapes, lava, how they can change the landscape, etc. This was our first experiment of the day.

What did we do with dirt, Styrofoam cups, and toothpaste? We were showing the impact lava can have on changing the landscape. We put a hole in the bottom of the empty cup, placed the opening of the tube of toothpaste in the bottom, and filled the cup with dirt.

When you squeeze the tube, the toothpaste displaces the dirt. Can you see it in the picture? I even made sure the toothpaste was red ...like lava. ;-) If you click on the pic to enlarge it...you can see the toothpaste a little better.

Then the children made their own volcanoes out of play dough. We then did the typical baking soda and vinegar to make the volcanoes erupt. :-) They had so much fun with this.

After we did our projects for volcanoes we went on to what I said we would do a long time ago. The next project for the Instant Challenges. We didn't follow it exactly again, but the children had fun. All three worked on it together. They used styrofoam cups, chenille sticks, tape, marshmallows, foil, and straws. Here is their boat that they made with these objects.

Believe it or not....it floats! The children did a great job. I am so proud of them. At first they complained because they didn't know how. They kept asking for help, but I told them to just think about it and they finally did it. See?!