Make an Erupting Volcano

Watching our homemade volcanoes erupt, really delighted our boys. They are really easy to make and all of the supplies you need, you most likely have sitting around the house.

We have been learning about Spain and how there is an active volcano on one of the islands, which starting arousing the boys interest in an erupting volcano.

We made two different volcanoes, just to see how they went. The second one we made was better, but this may be due to the size of the container used to how the liquid.

Erupting Volcano 1

small container  or jar (we used a 600ml but a smaller one would have been better)
ketchup (tomato sauce)
baking soda
liquid dishwashing detergent
water

Dough: mix 3 cups flour, 1 cup salt and 1 1/3 cups water, food colouring. Mix together to make a dough and mould it around the container to look like a mountain.

When you are ready for the volcano to erupt, swirl together the baking soda, detergent and water and pour into the volcano container. Then slowly add the tomato sauce. The lava in this volcano is slower and if your container is quite large it can be extremely slow.

What happens in this one is the vinegar in the tomato sauce reacts with the baking soda to produce carbon dioxide gas. The gas bubbles rise and bubble out the top.

We added a few drops of red food colouring as well, as we found the tomato sauce didn’t add very much colour.

 

Erupting Volcano 2

small container or jar
baking soda
vinegar
liquid dishwashing detergent
food colouring

newspaper / butchers paper and glue

Tape the small container to a piece of cardboard or in a baking tray. Rip up the newspaper into strips and glue the strips around the container to make it look like a mountain.  You can paint the mountain if you wish. Our boys were too eager to see the volcano explode, so we didn’t.

Add a couple of TBSP of baking soda to the container with a few squirts of the detergent. Add a couple of drops of red and yellow food colouring.

When you are ready for the eruption, slowly add the vinegar. 

 What happens in this one is the vinegar reacts with the baking soda to produce carbon dioxide gas. The gas bubbles rise and bubble out the top.

Some Fun Facts about Volcanoes!

Volcanoes are openings in the Earth’s surface. 

When the pressure builds up, they explode.

An erupting volcano can trigger tsunamis, floods, rockfalls and earthquakes.

More than half of the active volcanoes are located in the “Ring of Fire” around the Pacific Ocean.

Hot liquid rock under the Earth’s surface is known as magma.

The hot liquid rock comes out of a volcano it is called ‘lava.’

There are three types of volcanoes: active, dormant and extinct.

Volcanoes are very dangerous.