Make your own erupting volcano!

DIY -Make your own erupting volcano project

The word “volcano” comes from “Vulcan”, who was the Roman God of fire. There are over 500 active volcanoes in the world today. Meaning: over 500 volcanoes that have erupted in recorded history.

Guess my 7-year old’s excitement last semester when one of her assignments was about volcanoes! After some research through Pinterest and YouTube, we decided to make our own model of an erupting volcano. There are many ideas out there, but it had to be something she could actually make mostly by herself, with me only supervising. I knew that if we make something from papier mache, I would most likely sit and make it by myself.. We found this video by Scene-A-Rama, to be very helpful.

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To make an erupting volcano you are going to need:

• Big piece of thick cardboard
• scissors (or knife, but make sure you have adult supervision)
• newspaper
• painter’s tape
• small bottle
• cloth plaster wrap
• container with water
• paints and paint brushes

For erupting powder:

• 2 tablespoons baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• a couple of squirts dish hand washing soap
• 1-2 packages Kool Aid. To get a good “hot lava color”, use half amount of red cherry and half orange.
• Water

Step-by-step instructions:

1. Cut out a thick piece of cardboard the size you would like the base of your volcano to be.
2. Find an appropriate (not too big) bottle and place in the middle. We tried our “erupting recipe” and adjusted the amount according the size of the bottle. You’ll want to have enough to make it bubble over the top of your bottle. It’s better to experiment before, so you don’t make the volcano, just to discover the bottle you used is too big! We used a condiment bottle of some sort.
3. Crumple newspaper into balls and tape them into place around bottle. Try to form a basic shape of mountain. Painter’s tape is recommended, so you can paint on top.

   Step 3, taping balls of newspaper around bottle (with help of younger brother)

4. Open up the roll of cloth plaster wrap (we used this one, which I really recommend: Art Advantage Cloth Plaster Wrap http://a.co/aTkfGB7) Cut in manageable pieces, between 5-7 inches long. Keep a flat dish with lukewarm water next to you, place one or two plaster wrap pieces in water at a time, remove excess water with fingers and smear into place on top of newspaper to slowly form a mountain. Add more water with fingers if needed to smooth out the edges. We had never worked with this medium before, but I have to say I was pleasantly surprised! It is a lovely medium for kids to work with. Not too messy, really easy to stick and form and it dries hard. We will definitely use this again!
5. Let dry according instructions on plaster wrap package.

   Step 5 -cover completely with plaster wrap

6. Now it’s time to paint! We used green on the base and brown and grey, with streaks of orange/red on volcano. Let dry.

   It’s time to paint!

   Ready to go!

7. Make the erupting powder mix. We really liked this recipe I found at “Fun at home with Kids”, but adjust amount to however much you need.

Place the following in bottle in center of volcano:

• 2 tablespoons baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• a couple of squirts dish washing liquid
• 1-2 packages Kool Aid. To get a good “hot lava color”, use half amount of red cherry and half orange.

Eruption!

Add water SLOWLY to make the volcano erupt!!! Sit back and enjoy! REPEAT! You can add more water a few times -it’ll erupt again. We loved this recipe because it smells good from Kool Aid, instead of vinegar, which is used in most other recipes I have seen.

My daughter had a demonstration of her project in class and she was soo proud!

Here is the erupting volcano in action:

I really hope you’ll enjoy this project as much as we have! My daughter has brought it back to school for demonstrations a couple of times since she made it:) Comment below if you have any questions. 

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