"How did I get here?": Volcano Fail

What better way to end a month of lessons than by exploding a volcano?! I had big expectations for this lesson I thought it would be the students’ favorite. Well I was wrong.

My Monday morning started at 7:30 looking for someone with the key to unlock the office that held my supplies. I was finally able to get the door open around 8am and I ran upstairs to the teachers lounge to begin making the dough for the mountain of the volcano. I was about half way done making the mountain when the bell rang for class to begin. Great start to the day! So I transferred all of my supplies and my half of volcano to my classroom and I instantly had 25 students surrounding me, “Teacha what is it, what is it- volcano?” Wishing I had time for a second cup of coffee I got everyone in their seats and began my lesson, while my co-teacher continued to make the mountain. I quickly realized that our hard efforts to make the mountain were failing – the dough was too heavy and continually fell off of the water bottle. No big deal, the best part is the eruption right? I told the students to gather around and I followed the instructions of mixing water with vinegar and baking soda to make the volcano erupt. I have never seen this experiment completed before and I was expecting the “lava” to come spurting out of the bottle and to flow quickly down the sides. Not my volcano the “lava” kind of just flowed leisurely down the water bottle at my first attempt. As I continued making the volcanoes in all of my other classes I got better and better at adding the right mixture of ingredients to make it more exciting. By my last few classes I asked for a volunteer, put all of the ingredients in the bottle and put the cap back on. Then, I asked my volunteer to shake the bottle and open it. This created a much larger eruption that was much more fun to watch because of the build up of gases. I went back to my room after these lessons feeling defeated so I turned to the internet and watched a few videos of others doing the volcano experiment. They all had the same result I did. It turns out that my lesson was not as great of failure as I thought it was (besides the mountain fail). I just had too high of expectations for my volcano!