Making Volcanos

To prepare for a trip to Mt. St. Helens, we made our own volcanos. We did the old school vinegar and baking soda, it was lots of fun. The kids had a great time making them and erupting them.
We started with an empty water bottle and a piece of cardboard. Then we covered the water bottle with some plaster strips I bought. After that dried they got to paint. Malachi got very creative and added grass and a river. I gave them some monopoly houses to make it a little more life-like and voila--- our very own volcanos.

Lilli's creation

Malachi's masterpiece

Danic's work of art

Salmon Dissection

All month we have been studying salmon. We read a great book called Come Back Salmon. It is about an elementary school in Everett, WA that adopted a stream, cleaned it up, raised salmon eggs and let them go into the stream. Then they watched for them to come back. It was a great book, we learned a lot.
Then we took a trip to a fish hatchery and saw some salmon swimming upstream to spawn.
Lilli and I did a little salmon artwork, but the finale was today. We did a real salmon dissection. One of the awesome homeschool group moms hosted it and another's brother did the dissection.
Kathy and her son set up a very cool (and realistic) salmon habitat. Complete with an industrialized area to show how air and water pollution and dams affect the salmon. The kids got to do the pollution part and thought it was pretty awesome.

Then the dissection... I love the kids faces. Part interested, part horrified. It was great!

The kids were dying to see the brain. So he was a good sport and cut the head open.

When they were done Lilli asked if they could poke it. Poor dead salmon.

Bladder, Liver, intestines and eggs. Very cool.

Homeschooling is awesome!