In this activity students will label a model of a volcano.
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Student Instructions
Demonstrate your knowledge of volcanoes by labeling a diagram of a volcano.
Engage students by bringing volcano science to life with a safe, hands-on eruption activity! Interactive demonstrations help students visualize volcanic processes and reinforce key concepts beyond labeling diagrams.
Collect items like baking soda, vinegar, a plastic bottle, dish soap, red food coloring, and modeling clay or play dough. These household materials allow you to build a volcano and simulate an eruption safely in the classroom.
Shape modeling clay or play dough around the plastic bottle to form the volcano’s cone. Let students help sculpt the crater, sides, and even add features like secondary vents for extra realism.
Add 2 tablespoons of baking soda and a few drops of red food coloring into the bottle. Pour in a squirt of dish soap to make the eruption extra foamy. Explain how this mixture represents real magma and gases building up pressure underground.
Let students take turns pouring in vinegar to start the eruption. Watch as the 'lava' flows out of the crater, then discuss what’s happening and relate it to real volcanic eruptions and the labeled parts they’ve learned.
The main parts of a volcano to label include the ash, steam, and gas cloud, secondary cone, secondary vent, crater, magma chamber, main vent, lava, magma, and volcanic bombs.
Use a clear diagram and have students drag and drop labels onto each part. Encourage them to use arrows and text boxes to describe functions, making learning interactive and visual.
Magma is molten rock beneath the Earth's surface, while lava is magma that has reached the surface during an eruption.
The magma chamber stores molten rock underground and is the source of material that moves up through vents to cause eruptions, making it a key feature to label.
Digital tools like drag-and-drop diagrams, textables, and arrows help students label volcano parts accurately and understand their functions visually.