Erupting with FUN!

Now that assessments and report cards are done for January, we can resume regularly scheduled programming! We had SO MUCH fun this week learning about volcanoes. The excitement was not containable from day 1 this week when we read our focus story, Volcanoes. The kids were so pumped about just the book, that I knew we had to do big things this week. So we did! It was the perfect STEAM week (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Math), with more emphasis on science, technology, and arts)

We learned lots of great vocabulary words in this book...and were fascinated my the diagrams, illustrations, and photos. The jokes were pretty great, too! I imagine any of our students would love to add this to their home library if you are looking to find books that your child loves!

Our vocabulary consisted of: magma, lava, magma chamber, stratovolcano, ash, eruption, active, crater, vent, and more!

Then, we built our own volcanoes out of Crayola Air Dry Clay. This stuff is awesome, and the kids loved it! Most students figured out how to build a stratovolcano (the typical cone shaped volcanoes)!

Mixing up the ingredients proved to be super fun and exciting!!

Just look at all the smiles!.....and this video! Hilarious! They were totally into it!

On Friday, we took a Virtual Field Trip to Guatemala!! It was SO EXCITING!!! This was our first virtual field trip with this class, and they did so well. They were completely engaged and had some amazing questions. We had the best tour guide, Brandon, take us to 3 volcanoes in Guatemala. He was rich in knowledge, and got the kids really pumped. He started our session with some background knowledge and vocabulary----which we ROCKED, because of all our research earlier in the week. I was so impressed! Check out the photos from our LIVE, interactive, field trip!

We watched one guide walk the ridge of a Volcano Pacaya in Antiqua, Guatemala. It was a 1,000' drop on either side! YIKES! We also watched our field guide, Brandon, walk down into the lava fields of this volcano, where the mounds of lava rock were taller than him, and he's 6' tall!

Volcano Pacaya

* It is an active Volcano

* It's lava can be compared to peanut butter. It moves SO SLOW that you'd have to be slower than a snail to it to catch up to you.

It is SO warm at the base of a volcano you can cook food! In fact, many locals do. We watched our tour guide roast marshmallows between the lava rocks and eat them! They were toasty brown. They also toasted bread rolls. How cool is that?!

We felt like we were right there walking the twisting trails to the site of the volcanoes with Brandon.

It was a hazy day! Did you know that local schools have ash days due to all the hazardous ash falling to the ground? It's hard to imagine what staying indoors due to 3' of ash on the ground would be like. I think I'd prefer our snow days instead!!

More hiking

We even "kayaked" to Lake Atitlan, a crater lake caused by a volcano of the same name. This lake is 1,000' deep at it's deepest point, and continues to fill up, as the volcano has regular (sometimes daily) eruptions, even if they are small ones. This is a famous place to scuba dive because of the deep water. The lake has consumed many trees, homes, and buildings which also make for interesting exploration. CRAZY!

We could hear the rock crunch and crumble as we did more virtual hiking.

Along the trails, we had to stop for a bathroom break. Here's a Guatemalan "squatty potty". Yeah, I think we'll pass.

Kayaking through Lake Atitlan

Visitor's Center at Pacaya. They also had a Lava Store where locals set up a little market stand and sell jewelry made of lava rock!

Checking out how sharp lava rocks are. They don't have time to endure erosion or become weathered, so they remain pretty sharp!

Please be sure to ask your child about our Virtual Field Trip. Sorry to disappoint you, Hayleigh, when there wasn't a bus to pick us up! Ha ha! It took a bit for our first graders to wrap their minds around this sort of experience!

They did an AWESOME job asking Brandon questions, too!

Lastly, KUDOS to KENYON for stumping Mrs. Powell and Mrs. Weatherall this week! I'm hardly a geologist. Ok, not at all, to be honest. Kenyon asked what happens when lava mixes with water (or cools really fast).....

As I am writing this blog, I just asked my 10 year old if he knew what happens when lava and water mixes. His response, with no hesitation, was 'obsidian'. How does he know that, I ask? Minecraft. Ohhhhhh those Minecrafters are OH. SO. SMART!! I continue to be amazed with what Minecraft really teaches young minds.

Have you ever wondered what obsidian is? Well, Kenyon does, and he uses the term correctly. I only asked him to say it and tell me the beginning sound 100 times so I could look it up. I don;t claim to know everything, and I love when I learn something from a first grader! We have a give-take relationship. When in doubt, Google It! We came up with this: http://wonderopolis.org/wonder/what-is-obsidian

Lastly, we hope Miss Emington is feeling better because this is what happens when Mrs. Powell is left to teach P.E.! Miss Emington left us a PacMan game, which was super fun. We may not have played it exactly like she would have, but we think she'd be impressed that our heart rates were up, and we were having a blast!