Backyard Schooling

One of the things I love about homeschooling is how often learning happens along the way as we are just living life.

In History we recently learned a little about the city of Pompeii and how fast flowing hot lava from a nearby volcano burned and buried the city so quickly that it preserved a lot of the city's artifacts as it flowed---which apparently is rare when it comes to erupting volcanoes.

Of course Mara Kate wanted to know more about volcanoes so Kane told her they could build a pretend volcano outside in the backyard so she could better understand the way the lava flowed down the mountain and into the city of Pompeii back in 79 AD.

 Building their mountain.
As I was taking this picture I reminded her that God is the one who builds REAL volcanoes!

 They used a small glass vase in the center of their mountain

to hold the chemicals needed to cause the eruption.

 Flowing "lava"

The mountain was build at a bit of an angle so the lava ended up only flowing down one side. Oh well.

Poor Mara Kate wasn't fully satisfied though, as she was wanting to build a city at the base, 

but we didn't take the illustration quite that far.