"V" is for Volcano! Fun Homeschool crafts

I decided to take a chill pill on homeschooling--whether or not my kid was getting burned out-I don't know-but I sure was! She's only 3 but she is ready to learned basic kindergarten material--so we started--but it was too much for me--homeschooling was taking all morning--then I watched a DVD where Michael Pearl (author of the amazing book "To Train up a Child") talked about how homeschooling's goal should be to instill a lifelong desire to learn. Focus on what they are good at, cover the basics, but find out their gifts and help them excel. Something a public school classroom can't do with 30 other kids.

So right now I am trying to make learning fun. A couple days ago it was "D" is for dots. And I cut out the letter D and we sang a song about it and then gave the kids those neon yard sale dot stickers to put all over the D. Simple and so much fun (for them--I went and did something else :) My daughter asks every day to do a "craft!"

So today was "V" is for volcano--we sang a song about V (these songs and activities are in this pre-school letter book I got from Walmart). I did get online and show them a few videos of a volcano and lava because that was pretty hard to imagine when I described it and then we looked at a map to see where Hawaii and New Zealand were (where the volcanoes we saw were from) and then we all went outside and with former biology teacher daddy ;) we made the volcano.

Recipe for a vocano:

• dirt (or if you like to waste money--playdough or clay--this was the book's suggestion which I thought was ridiculous when dirt works great and has zero clean-up...but maybe some people don't have backyards...so there you go--now you have options :)
• tbsp (or more) of baking soda
• vinegar (kids take turns putting a 1/4 cup of vinegar in the cup)
• red food dye or watered down red paint (I didn't have food dye--we don't use the stuff--but the paint worked fine, just throw it in the cup with the baking soda)
• a paper cup

My 3 yr old daughter made the connection that baking soda was what we used in baking so I tried to talk about the science behind it and how the baking soda reacts with the acidic vinegar which is why we use baking soda instead of baking powder when we are making foods with acidic ingredients like lemon juice, buttermilk, vinegar, etc....nobody cared--they all tuned me out!

But they had a blast erupting the lava--my daughter is naturally timid and was very concerned the "lava" was hot but then realized it wasn't and everything was ok :)

We put a V on the volcano and talked about how words like vinegar and volcano start with v--all in all--lotsa fun!