Wednesday, July 22, 2026

Volcanoes and types of lava

Surely every child loves to learn about volcanoes! The rice crispie volcano models are always a hit.
Stratovolcano inside
Viscosity of lava—the amount of gases each type will dissolve determines that lava's characteristics.

Tornadoes, Hurricanes, Floods, Tsunamis

Convection currents in a tub
Turbulence as the currents mix
Cold and hot water separating into layers
We got out the tornado bottles, of course.
"Underwater volcano" erupting

Natural Disasters Unit plan; Plate tectonics; Earthquakes

 
Our second "Summer School" unit was Natural Disasters, another perennial favorite topic among especially little boys (though my little girls have never complained about it either!). (Posts from the Old Days)
First was earthquakes, with this demonstration of plate tectonics on a molten cocoa earth (you just heat water with a layer of cocoa powder on top and then watch the convection currents break it up and move it around).
More plate tectonics and types of faults
Wow, some great buckling here
Testing different building heights and compositions for stability
Towers and liquefaction
Building earthquake-resistant structures (or trying to!!)
Clementine made gnomes, of course
Starting small :)
A little more daring
Ziggy was excited to try this earthquaking this tall tower I made (he anticipated what was coming)
Another gnome?? Does she do nothing but make gnomes? (Gnope.)
Some more avant-garde designs

Tuesday, July 21, 2026

Rockets


Of course we made film canister rockets as part of learning about fireworks! They're so fun. Some resources:

Also of course, we repeated our ever-popular "building demolition" demonstration where we use strings (not explosives!) to tear down a block creation. It makes me nostalgic to remember how much the big boys loved doing this when they were little. (And this group reminds me so much them, including little Daisy!):
Demolition and other uses of explosives resources are here:

Colored Fire

I have always remembered how cool it was the first time we made colored fire (this was WAY back when we first started homeschooling) so we decided to try it again. Sam helped since it always scares me to do things like this alone.
(People don't look extremely enthralled here, but they were!)
Chemicals to use:
Colored fire: Yellow HEET (methanol)
Lithium from battery—red
Calcium chloride ice melt—orange
Baking soda (sodium) or red HEET—yellow
Boric Acid (ant and roach killer)—green
Plain yellow HEET, copper sulfate—blue/turquoise
Potassium chloride salt substitute—violet
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2XIMKX3ktg&t=124s How to make rainbow fire
https://thekidshouldseethis.com/post/explore-the-science-behind-fireworks-and-the-galaxy Colored chemical reactions in the galaxy
https://thekidshouldseethis.com/post/youre-a-firework-scientifically-speaking
https://thekidshouldseethis.com/post/the-science-of-firework-color

Firework models; Chemical Reactions

 
We haven't ton a ton of chemistry lately in school, so it was fun learning about some basics like chemical and physical changes and chemical reactions with the kids. We did a bunch of the classic demonstrations like convection currents and baking-soda-and-vinegar and hydrogen-peroxide-and-yeast reactions. (Here's a fact sheet and experiment page for that last one.)
I love their pleased smiles as the reactions work
some of them had pleased smiles, anyway.
They liked this "fireworks in a jar" demonstration too (instructions here, but you can just google "fireworks in a jar" if that link breaks; there are tons of examples of it)
The kids really liked making these fireworks "models" out of lentils and poppyseeds and so forth. (That smiley face Ziggy made is how they really would make one of those shaped hearts or smiley faces you see sometimes at fireworks shows!) You can look at pictures of cross-sections of real fireworks to get an idea what they look like and how to make them (one is here, and we'd also watched a few documentaries about the process).

No matter how much tape we put over these sections, some of the seeds and beans always get out!
This is Gus pretending to be a fireworks man, in his safe little hut with all his computer-controlled display set out for the show!
Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...