Snow Day

It was snowing, wind was blowing and roads were drifting. We stayed home yesterday. :-) Cool has the option of working from home on occasion and took that opportunity. The picklets had none of their schoolwork here because we left it at my mom's over the weekend. So, I took a movie off the shelf and school started.

We put in the 90 minute video "Mount St. Helen's: The turmoil of Creation Continues". It was really quite interesting with how the geologists knew something was going on and were keeping a close eye on it. The morning of the eruption the scientist 6 miles from the mountain reported that the growing "bump" didn't change over night. A couple hours later it exploded. Nature won. Cool even took a break from work and sat to watch it with us. It was so masive we were all in awe.

After the movie the picklets got a snack of popcorn and an apple and set to work. Their assignments were:

• Draw a volcano and label the parts


• Name the three major types of volcanoes and tell their characteristics
• Name five volcanoes in each of those three types
• Name 2 volcanoes in each state that has a volcano and the last time they erupted.
• Where does the word volcano originate from from.
• Copywork: "Volcanoes can erupt very suddenly and violently, or they can pour out their contents relatively quietly."

This took them until early afternoon. They then experimented with making their own volcanoes with a soda bottle, baking soda and vinegar. They had a chart on the white board where they filled in how much baking soda and how much vinegar they needed to get the most bang for the buck. Hypotheses were made and then the trial and error began. It was nice to see the experimentation even though I don't think they needed to use a whole box of baking soda and nearly an entire gallon of vinegar. ;-)

Chip decided more pressure was needed so he put a small hole in the bottle top and screwed it on fast. It created about a 4 foot geyser.

In all it was a fun snow day.