volcanic eruption

Inspired by Artful Parent, the kiddoes and I made a volcano in our dining room yesterday.  And boy, what is a hit!

I began by making a quick batch of salt dough (4 cups flour, 2 cups salt, 2 cups water, a shot of glycerin).  I made it on the watery side and with glycerin so the kids could mold it more easily.  Really, I should've made more dough, but I ran out of salt.  The kids molded the dough around a quart-size jar (with a little help):

And then decorated the volcano (which is almost as much fun as erupting it) with green playdough, leaves/grass from the yard and doomed lego people:

Having been warned by The Artful Parent, I put some old towels around our tray (note to self: next time use a pan or plate WITHOUT holes in it! - duh):

And then we were ready for the mad scientist part.  We filled the jar about 2/3s full with warm water, blue food coloring (because they wanted blue lava - I should've used more food coloring - you'll notice the lava is only faintly blue-tinged), a few drops of dish soap, and 2 Tbsp baking soda.  Then we stood back and I poured in some vinegar:

I kept pouring in more vinegar to produce multiple eruptions until the volcano was all tuckered out.  I'm not a good photographer at the best of times and had a terrible time with our little camera taking action shots while pouring, but here's a couple of bad photos of the kids' reactions:

There was lots of squealing.  And lots of cheering for dead lego people.  This is something of a violent activity :).  And then lots and lots of water/vinegar and wet salt-dough mess.  Next time I think I'll try to find a piece of cardboard to do it on so we can just dump the thing in the trashcan.  But it was worth it.  A fun indoor activity for a hot summer afternoon.