Make a Volcano

This classic science project and experiment is so fun to do! Many times, when we make a volcano, we would just do the eruption part of this project using an empty water bottle and not actually mold a volcano shape. Watching the eruption over and over again, sure kept the boys engaged for quite some time! The grown-ups in the house had just as much fun too!

Volcanoes are fascinating! To help us organize our thoughts, we created a chart to write down questions we had and record information we learned from our research. Here are some book titles we read from our local library:

Volcano Books for Kids

Volcanoes! by Anne Schreiber
Volcanoes! By the Editors of TIME for Kids with Jeremy Caplan
Volcanoes! by Emily K. Green
Eruption! The Story of Volcanoes by Anita Ganeri

We also watched a video and listened to amazing facts about volcanoes from National Geographic Kids. After reading, watching, and talking about volcanoes, we were ready to make our model! We made our own salt dough to make our volcano shape.

Ingredients for Salt Dough

3 cups of flour
1 cup of salt
1 cup of water
2 tablespoons of vegetable oil
Brown paint (optional) (add +)
Coffee grounds (optional)
Elmer’s Glue (add+)
Equal parts white glue and water mixture (optional)

*note – you can double the recipe and make a larger volcano

Pour all of the ingredients in a large bowl. We love the Brylanhome Mixing Bowl Set . Mix and knead with your hands. Add a little bit more water at the end, if you need it to come together more. Place your empty water bottle in the middle of a tray with raised sides (to catch any liquid that comes out). With your salt dough, shape it into a volcano around the bottle.

With our first volcano, we decided to use a small water bottle (8 fl oz). We also used a mixture of glue and water to brush over our volcano. Then we spooned over coffee grounds to spruce up our model.

Now for more fun! It’s time to make the volcano erupt!

Ingredients for Eruption

For our small water bottle:

1 ounce vinegar
½ – 1 tablespoon of baking soda
a couple of drops of dishwashing liquid
Liqua-Gel red food coloring (add+)

For our large water bottle:

⅓ cup of vinegar
2 tablespoons of baking soda
a couple of drops of dishwashing liquid
Liqua-Gel red food coloring (add+)

Pour the vinegar, red food coloring, and dish washing liquid in the bottle. Then pour in the baking soda (you can make a funnel out of paper to pour the baking soda inside, if needed). Stand back and watch the eruption!

We made two more volcanoes after that and used a larger water bottle (16.9 fl oz) for each volcano. We doubled the salt dough recipe to cover up both of the larger bottles. If you like, once the dough has dried, you can paint the volcano brown.

Hope you enjoyed this post – let us know if you’ve ever done this volcano project before!

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