HELP!  THERE'S A VOLCANO IN MY KITCHEN! No. of Volcano Observers: OTHER SCIENCE GAMES TO DO AT HOME PLUS FREE BEAUTY TIP FOR BUSY MOMS MORE VOLCANOES

MAKE A VOLCANO ERUPT IN YOUR KITCHEN (With ingredients you have around the house): Tip – It’s fun to draw or trace dinosaurs on colored paper or thin colored foam and cut them out to place around your volcano, or you can use toy dinosaurs.  This experiment, or game, is so fun that even kids who don't stay focused for long will be able to focus for as long as 30 minutes.

Ingredients:

•        3 cups flour

•        1/2 - 1 cup salt

•        2-3 tablespoons cooking oil

•        ½ cup water

•        empty 20-oz water bottle

•        deep dish or a pan (a quiche dish works, so does a deep dish pie plate or a cake pan)

•        gel or liquid food coloring

•        dish detergent (4 or 5  good squirts)

•        3 Tb. baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) – you may want more

•        vinegar

How To Make The Dough:

• Mix together 3 cups flour, 1 cup salt, water, and ½ cup of cooking oil (start with 1/2 cup of water and add more if necessary to make dough thick but pliable).
• Mix the dough with your hands or a mixer until well blended.
• If you like, you can add a few drops of food coloring to the dough to make it volcano-colored.

Make a Volcano Cinder Cone:

• Fill the empty drink bottle most of the way full with hot tap water.

• Add a squirt of dish detergent and some baking soda (2 or 3 tablespoons). You can add different colors of food coloring too.

• Set the drink bottle in the center of a pan or deep dish.

• Press the dough around the bottle and shape it so that you get a volcano.

• Be careful not to plug the opening of the bottle.

• You can squeeze food coloring on the sides of your volcano. When it erupts, the lava will flow down the sides and pick up the coloring.

Make The Volcano Erupt:

•  When you are ready for the eruption, pour some vinegar into the bottle (which contains hot water, dishwashing detergent, and baking soda).

•  Make the volcano erupt again by adding more baking soda. Pour in more vinegar to trigger the reaction.  

•  Stir with a thin stick to prolong the oozing foam.   Add more food coloring, more baking soda, soap, and vinegar to get more eruptions.

•  You may need to pour off some of the 'lava' into the sink between eruptions.

•  You can clean up spills with warm soapy water. Food coloring can stain clothes, skin, or countertops, but the chemicals used are generally non-toxic.

How It Works:

baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) + vinegar (acetic acid) --> carbon dioxide + water + sodium ion + acetate ion

Acetic acid (a weak acid) reacts with and neutralizes sodium bicarbonate (a base). The carbon dioxide that is given off is a gas. Carbon dioxide is responsible for the fizzing and bubbling during the 'eruption'.

 BEAUTY TIP FOR BUSY MOMS AND GRANDMAS USING BAKING SODA AND VINEGAR: (or Help! There's a Volcano in my hair!)

Mix 1 cup vinegar and 2 cups water.  Shampoo your hair twice and towel-dry.  Add 1/2 tsp baking soda to the vinegar and water.  As it foams pour it over your hair and comb it through.  Let it sit 5 minutes and then rinse well, add conditioner, and rinse again.  Wrap hot towel around your hair and leave for 10 to 30 minutes.  The fizzing reaction of the baking soda and vinegar removes residue from your hair left by shampoos, conditioners, hair coloring, hair spray, dirt, oil, etc. and leaves your hair soft and shiny.  --This tip is from Christina Martin, a beautician for 30 years. Other Low-Cost Beauty Tips

 VOLCANO PHOTOS FROM CHILE:

OTHER SCIENCE EXPERIMENTS YOU CAN DO AT HOME

1. Make Pennies Shiny (clean tarnish from metal)

2. The Cornstarch Experiment

3. Exploring Sound (beans, rice, and other stuff in plastic eggs)

4. Color Experiment (butterflies made with coffee filters)

CLEAN THE TARNISH OFF SHINY OBJECTS, LIKE PENNIES

Materials:

• 3 Tb Lemon Juice

• 1 tsp Salt

• Rusty or corroded pennies

• Tall glass

Procedure: Mix lemon juice and salt in glass, add pennies and swish them in the liquid.  They will become shiny.

 Why?: The lemon juice and salt mix with the sulphur coating on the pennies, creating hydrochloric acid, which reacts with the copper and removes the coating.

THE CORNSTARCH EXPERIMENT - ISOTROPY AND THIXOTROPY:

Materials:

• Cornstarch or corn flour

• Bowls

• Tablespoon

 Procedure: Place 3 Tb of cornstarch in ½ cup water in a bowl, stir.

Why?: Isotropy is the property of a fluid to become firm when agitated.

Thixotropy is the opposite of isotropy in that the fluid mixture becomes more fluid (less firm) as it is agitated.

EXPLORING SOUND:

Materials

• Plastic eggs

• Items to put in eggs, such as rice, beans, small screws, pennies, toothpicks broken into many pieces, raisens, marshmallows, tiny leggos,

• Marker to number eggs

 Procedure: Fill plastic eggs part-way with items.  Number the eggs and have the children try to guess what is inside each egg.

 COLOR EXPERIMENT THAT MAKES BUTTERFLIES OR FLOWERS

Author: Latrenda Knighten
Categories: Kindergarten, Science, Arts and Crafts

Inks and markers are often combinations of several colored dyes. The colors of inks and dyes are molecules of coloring substances that are dissolved in a liquid base. When the liquid creeps up the coffee filter, it dissolves the coloring molecules and splits it into different colored chemicals. Different colors get carried along faster and farther than others because some color molecules are bigger and heavier than others. Help your child explore chromatography (the process of separating colors or pigments) while creating a neat art project! Here's how to get started:

 What You Need:

• Coffee filters
• Clear plastic cup
• Water
• Tablespoon
• Water soluble colored markers
• Paper towels
• Clothespins and adhesive magnet strips
• Chenille stems (pipe cleaners)

What You Do:

1. Use a pencil to make a mark on a coffee filter about two inches from the bottom.
2. Give your child the coffee filter and ask him to fold it in half. 
3. Use water soluble markers to decorate the bottom of the coffee filter above the 2-inch mark. 
4. Add 2 tablespoons of water to the cup.
5. Fold the coffee filter in half and then in half again and place it in the cup. 
6. Watch the colors move up the filter. Talk about the different colors that appear on the filter as the filter absorbs the water.
7. Unfold the filter and place it on paper towels to dry. Once the filter is completely dry, your child can use his science project to make a pretty craft project! Allow your child to showcase the results of the chromatography experiment by making a butterfly magnet or a flower.
   
   To make a butterfly magnet: gather the filter into a clothespin to resemble a butterfly; place a piece of the magnet strip on the back of the clothespin and display on your refrigerator.
   
   To make a flower: fold the filter into fourths and twist the chenille stem around the bottom, then fluff the filter so that it looks like a flower.

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