Observing Volcanoes

As we've been reading a variety of mythological stories from different cultures, we've also been thinking about the "scientific" explanation for these events/phenomena.  

One of our favorite mythological stories is that of the Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland/Scotland.  In the myth, the giant's create this long pathway to connect the two countries by using large stones and pieces of the earth.  Scientists, however, tell us that the rock formations were created by volcanoes many, many years ago.  

We discovered that maybe we didn't know very much about what a volcano is, or even what it does.  Over the course of two days, we took some time to observe some volcanoes, primarily Icelandic Volcanoes, and we each had drawing tools or watercolors (or a variety) nearby. 

We thought about: 
-What shapes and colors do we see when we watch it?
-How does it move? 
-What is the lava doing? 
-Sounds

Friday, April 9th

What do you think it feels like? 
“Like fire.” - Saul, 3.8 years

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“The fire is jumping up.” - Saul

“Yeah, I want this one.” - Saul

“It also looks like pizza. It’s a weird pizza in a weird shape.
” - Saul, 3.8 years

Before our call on Friday, Saul and his mom had done a volcano experiment at home to think about how it erupts. 

​“This is the mountain.  Coming, coming, coming, and then down.” - Saul

Saul brought watercolors to recreate a volcano with our observations. 

“The volcanoes are inside of the watercolor papers.  I’m thinking about a volcano that is big, but I covered it inside of the water towels.  I’m turning into a pizza.” - Saul 
Would you want to eat volcano pizza?
“Volcano pizza is yummy. I get that this one is not hot. It’s hot. The volcano pizza taste like cookies. It’s a cookie that has some chocolate in it.” - Saul 

Monday, April 12th

On Monday, we revisited volcanoes.  We watched a new, livestream, video of the Icelandic volcano, and we revisited some footage of the lava flow. 

What did we notice about the volcano on Friday? What was it doing? What did we see? 
“We saw a little bit of forklift boogie.” - Saul [remembering that on Fridays we watch his favorite forklift video]
When we were watching the volcano, what was the lava doing? Do you remember how you described it? 
“The lava was fire.” - Saul 
You had a really cool way of describing it. You said it was jumping out of the top; out of the crater.
“You know Elyse, when it was jumping then all the pieces of fire had little pieces.  Then it jumped into little pieces of fire.” - Saul 
After it was jumping, do you remember what we observed it doing after that? 
“Yeah! Going down the hill!” - Saul 
It was flowing down the volcano. 
“I don’t know where the volcano is.  It should be in a volcano city.” - Saul


You remembered the fire jumping. 
“I have a good memory.” - Saul 
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Saul had two bowls with him for a snack, and once they were empty, he transformed them into small volcanoes! 


​“This volcano doesn’t have a hole. This one doesn’t shoot out fire. The fire is inside. It’s not going to come out.  It’s a volcano that doesn’t let fire out. It’s quiet, but it has music.” - Saul 
A musical volano?
“Yeah!!!” - Saul 
You crated a whole new kind of volcano. 

“It doesn’t shoot out fire, it makes music.  It makes forklift boogie and Gecko music.” - Saul​

The live video of the volcano showed us that it is not always flowing lava like in the video we saw on Friday.  We observed a little bit of fire, some smoke, and we noticed that there is some grass nearby. 

“I notice that there is no fire coming out.” - Saul

It’s time to draw our volcano.  You can draw a musical one, or a fire one. 
“A smoke one.” - Saul 
“These are my materials.  I brought them again.” - Saul

“A volcano, which is big has so many places for the volcano to go.” - Saul 
And we can use that information for our drawing. 
“You know I have illustrations in my book.” - saul 
And you can be an illustrator. You can illustrate the volcano. 
“No thanks. I’m Saul.” — Saul

“These are logs for making a pizza volcano.” - Saul
“Elyse, it’s all of the colors of the rainbow. We can make a rainbow volcano.” - Sual 
Let’s start with that idea.  Which color are you going to use for your outside shape? 
“Red-orange.  This is red orange.” - Saul 
You’re going to use red-orange for the shape of your volcano? 
“Yes, this is the fire. This is the coloring.  We’re going to use a different coloring of red.” - Saul 

​Saul used red-orange, red, and black to work on his volcano drawing.

“I’m making a cake volcano. It needs frosting on my cake volcano. I’m putting all of the frosting inside the machine, which makes it good. I made a cake volcano. You don’t eat cake volcano, you just taste it with your hand. Taste a little bit of the cake.” - Saul 
It tastes like fire! ​

“No, it’s cool. It smells like cake. Yeah, and it tastes like a cake. All the time the machine creates.  Up and down up and down.  All the time it creates the cake. I already built my volcano cake, and now I’m going to cook it in the oven.” - Saul

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