First Great Lesson (2) : The Volcano

Continuing our Great Lessons this week with a lesson on Volcanoes.  The only thing that we prepared here was the paper mache volcano we made few weeks ago.  Check out this post, Science Project: How to Make an Erupting Volcano Model, to know more about our DIY erupting volcano model.  Now, to encourage the kids to explore the materials when I’m not around, I displayed our learning materials on top of our shelf.


For books and references, we are using these three books.  Both of these books are appropriate for kids ages 3 years and older.  I read these books to Vito weeks ago, while Mavi independently reads them.

• National Geographic Volcanoes
• Volcanoes Read and Find Out
• Volcanoes My First Discovery Series

I added our Grimms Large Fire Stacker, to introduce the element of fire in this lesson.  Vito loves playing with this!



This is a closeup of our volcano.  Mavi added the mammal’s skulls we have from Safari Toobs (more of this soon!) to represent the dead animals during an eruption.


We also used the parts of a volcano 3 part cards from Montessori Print Shop which I bought ages ago.  Both of the boys worked on these cards.  Vito worked on the matching activity, while Mavi worked on the description cards (homemade).




In the coming days, we’ll work with the different types of volcano.  I made these sheets for Mavi to use and recreate his own presentation of the types of volcano using homemade playdough.


We also examined this map of active volcanoes and the plates.  We plotted those we know of in the map, and identified “safe” places to live in LOL.  The active volcano map was from here, and the blank layout map was sourced from SuperTeachers.


Here Mavi is working on his Volcano booklet.


My husband and his family was a victim of a volcanic eruption in the Philippines.  He was around 14 years old at the time Mt. Pinatubo erupted.  It was one of the biggest calamity in our homeland and killed thousands.  The boys are very much interested in this story, especially Mavi.  So I searched high and low in YouTube to see if there’s a documentary of this eruption, and luckily I found one.  We watched this video over and over again, to witness the real life experiences of the people and how such a calamity affects their lives.

And of course, the highlight of the volcano study is putting our model to work, and seeing it erupt!  Watch it here!