One morning in Preschool 1 at RisingOaks Early Learning | St. Brigid, the children were playing with dinosaurs and the topic of volcanoes came up. We decided to try to make a volcano outside using some snow. We talked about how volcanoes look like mountains, and so we discussed as a group the best way to build a volcano, was to make a big mountain!
Once outside, educators Melissa brought out baking soda and vinegar to conduct the chemical reaction to simulate the volcano. The children got to work and used their shovels and sleds to collect extra snow to make a large volcano and with the educator’s support, we were able to build a volcano that had the baking soda in a container inside. Once our volcano was ready, we talked about what was going to happen once we poured the red vinegar (we used food colour) into the baking soda.
During this experience, children developed a range of skills such as problem solving, inquiry, hypothesizing and investigating. Some interesting conversation occurred during this experience such as “What happens if we add more vinegar or baking soda?” “Why is this happening?” This activity has given us a great opportunity to expand and explore other topics related to science. We can’t wait to see what other science experiments we can do and how those experiences can open new ways to explore other topics!
