Showing posts with label easy volcano. Show all posts
Showing posts with label easy volcano. Show all posts

Monday, June 27, 2011

Virtual Destinations and Beyond! Brazil and Ecuador

Wow, we have had an excellent week in Brazil and Ecuador! I cannot believe how much there was to do and see! We started in Brazil where learned about the animals of the Amazon Rain Forest and Even took a boat ride through the Amazon waters!
We learned about the dangerous beasts that reside in the waters of the Amazon. We watched a MOVIE all about the Deadly Animals of the Amazon and learned so much more! 

After watching the movie, we went to the Shedd Aquarium to explore their Amazon exhibit. It was awesome to see them explore this exhibit after learning all we had discussed before arriving. They were able to name the names of some of the fish and also locate them in the tanks.
Next it was Carnaval time (Carnival), where we listened to SAMBA music and even took a small lesson!
In order to properly Samba during Carnaval, we needed to make our feathered masks!! We made them out of paper plates!! I will share this lesson in another post!

After we were done with creating them, we decided to have our own Carnaval at home! We listened to Samba Music and danced our hearts out! What fun we all had with this lesson! Before we knew it, it was time for a 5 hour flight to Ecuador! We were going to explore more of the rainforest, a volcano and the Galpagos islands!! 
We made Tamarin Monkey Bookmarks and Anaconda Keychains, using the colors of the Brazilian flag. We took this time to listen to sounds of the Rainforest on the radio and try to identify the animals we heard in the recording!

We studied the animals of the rainforest with a game I created, using Toob animals and a fun fact sheet I put together. (I will explain this in a future post too!) This was very popular and is still being played with often!
We toured the Andes mountains and Cotopaxi, one of the worlds most active volcanoes! OH WOW, this was so much fun! Check out my photo gallery HERE for instructions! We even put our rain forest animals on there as decoration AND made our own rain forest trees!! All around a truly memorable trip that even had us pricing tickets to Ecuador for real!!! My husband just wants to wait until the youngest is a bit older and can handle all the walking required! We cannot wait!

Today we flew for 18 hours from the Galapagos Islands off to Tanzania in Africa! WOW, what a flight! This week we will be spending in Tanzania trekking up the Highest African Mountain of Mount Kilimanjaro! Did you know that this mountain is right near the equator as well?! Just like in Ecuador! We will learn all about this mountain and the Kalahari dessert as well!

As we head on over to South Africa, we will be going on Safari!!! How exciting! We cannot wait to see what we come across!

Lesson learned will be: African Wildlife, Mountains and Mountain Climbing, Flags and languages and other various facts.

Crafts: Make a camera out of of a mac and cheese box, toilet tube binoculars for safari, Paper Beads for jewelry making and some painting of the flag will be done too!

Cooking: In the kitchen we will grill kebabs of meats! The kids have been wanting to eat food-on-a-stick for awhile now! hahaha!! Much better than corn dogs too! Yay!

Please join us on our travels!!!


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Friday, June 24, 2011

Cotopaxi Volcano!

If you are following our Virtual Vacation this Summer, you know that we landed in South America on Monday and just this morning arrived in Ecuador from Brazil. The flight was 5.5 hours and what a better way to stretch our legs than on a hike to check out one of the World's most active volcanoes?! We learned all about Cotopaxi in the Andes Mountains and decided to build our own! It's so easy that you most likely have all the ingredients at home!

You will Need:
Play Dough
Tin Foil
Baking Soda
Plastic Cup
White Vinegar
Food Coloring
Deep Dish to catch the 'lava'
optional items: Trees and Native Animals

Cover your cup in tinfoil, careful to go over the lip and mold a mountain shape. Ours looks a bit crazy, but I loved letting the kids do it to their liking.

 Iron out the clay so that it becomes flat sheets and then press it over the foil. This seemed to be their favorite part as it took forever!!
Add in trees and animals if you would like and place 2tsp. of baking soda into the cup.
(we made the trees out of pipe cleaners). We used animals from the Rainforest Toob and some other randoms that the kids had on hand.
1 cup of white vinegar with food coloring to make it the color of lava!

Pour in the vinegar mixture a little at a time.

Watch your volcano EXPLODE!!!!
Over and Over again!

The kids have had so much fun with this, that I actually had to empty it out and scoop out the baking soda at the bottom, so that they could erupt it for Daddy too!

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