Lesson Plans - Volcano Study

One of the topics of study that I had planned for my class was to cover volcanoes. We discussed how volcanoes were formed, what kind of volcanoes there were, we located volcanoes on a globe and discussed which volcanoes were active, how researchers could study to find out if a volcano was going to erupt, and we studied famous volcano eruptions.

We read Hill of Fire, by Thomas Lewis and reviewed portions of Pompeii... Buried Alive! by Edith Kunhardt.

The students were most fascinated with the opportunity to build our own volcano. We did this using 2-liter bottles, newspaper, salt dough ( a dough made of 1 cup flour, ½ cup salt, ½ cup water), foil, baking soda, dish washing soap, glitter, red food coloring, and vinegar. The students were enthralled with the end result of their volcano eruption.

There is an incredible link on the Discovery Channel website, tied in with the study of Pompeii and Mt. Vesuvius, that is an interactive virtual volcano. Based on the conditions you set for viscosity and gas, it will tell you what type of volcano you have formed, then you get to watch the volcano erupt. Students tried to duplicate the volcanoes with their two-liter bottles and salt dough.

Because the salt dough is semi-wet, like a play-dough, students can form the material as they need around their two-liter bottles for shape. The dough dries in about 24 hours.

You start with your two-liter bottle, and wrap the bottle with newspaper and then aluminum-foil. By using these materials, students have a little more ability to shape, based on the quantity of paper used. Once they have formed their outer shape, they cover this with the salt-dough to simulate the hardened exterior of a volcano.

While this dries, students start to prepare their mixture. Using 2 T of dishwashing liquid, sprinkles of red glitter (for added effect), 2 T baking soda, about 20 drops of red food coloring and 2 cups of vinegar. It is important to add the dry ingredients and then quickly add the vinegar.

The students were able to track how quickly their volcanoes erupted, the speed that the magma would hit nearby towns, they could come to conclusions regarding the different kinds of volcanoes and if their model was a success based on their original concept or volcano type, and above all else: it was fun. After the volcanoes were finished they even went back to the Discovery Channel virtual volcano to revisit the different kinds of volcanoes around the world.

This was a very fun hands-on experiment for the study of volcanoes.

Students could even do more with this lesson, making mini-books with their vocabulary words to show pictures of the parts of a volcano, where the seismic plates are for different types of volcanoes, and more.