Saturday, January 19, 2013

Streamer Volcano - Scissor Skills

Bubble and Squeak have become interested in volcanoes again after a recent visit to a museum in the city. There are a million questions from both of them; "why is there smoke?", "can you go inside a volcano?", "where does the lava go?".
Today we incorporated some fine motor practice for Squeak and some imaginary play into our volcano theme by making some from streamers and cardboard tubes. 
We also made some more Play Dough Volcanoes, because the day wouldn't be complete without a bicarb and vinegar eruption, would it :)

WE USED:

Streamer Volcano
* cardboard tube
* length of red streamer
* scissors
* tape or blutac (sticky tac)

Play Dough Volcano
* playdough 
(great recipe here)
* plate
* shot glass or similar
* bi carb soda
* white vinegar
* red food colouring

Previous volcano activities:


 

We had a look at how a volcano works and what happens when they erupt.

I gave the girls a toilet roll tube, a pair of scissors, a long length of red streamer and some tape each and they got to work snipping their streamer into short lengths to make 'lava'.
Squeak needs a bit of practice with her fine motor skills and despises practicing with scissors, so this activity was a great way to get her interested in using them. 

Both the streamer cutting and the taping part of this activity were a really good fine motor workout.

 I was interested to see that Bubble (almost 6) stuck all of her streamers inside her tube while Squeak (almost 4) stuck hers on both the inside and outside.


One streamer volcano.

Both of the girls also love dinosaurs and they wasted no time setting them up with their volcanoes for a play.

To make our play dough volcanoes we made up a double batch of uncooked play dough. 

Then we placed a shot glass in the middle of a plate and moulded play dough around them to create our volcano shape.

The girls loved that the play dough was still warm. After they were happy with the shape they decided to decorate them with toy snakes.

We took our volcanoes outside onto the grass and the girls spent ages filling the middle of their volcanoes with bi carb and then pouring in the vinegar (coloured with red food colouring) to make it 'erupt' over and over.

 The girls always love this activity, I'm pretty sure they'd still be out there if we hadn't run out of vinegar!
I read somewhere that adding a few drops of dish washing liquid to the bi carb creates a better foamy effect but we are yet to give this a try.


1 comment: