Monster Truck Smash

Yesterday after school we created our own monster truck smash rally. Smashing anything is great fun for boys! We got out their box of cars and trucks and found all of the monster trucks. Then we chose a few cars that would be fun to smash. I got out the foil and cut small sheets that would wrap over the top of the cars. We formed the foil over the cars and then slipped the cars out from underneath so the foil forms were left. After creating about 6 "cars" for each boy the monster trucks were ready to roll! The boys got their trucks and smashed over all of their cars. We were able to reform the cars a few times, but if you have the heavy duty foil it would probably be even better.

Baking Soda Volcanoes

We have had some pretty nice weather recently which has led us outside to the park to play each day after school. This week, though, has been rainy and has kept us inside. In an attempt to be entertaining and educational I thought it would be fun to baking baking soda volcanoes. We didn't make unique volcano of any kind, but that would have certainly been a little more time consuming.

I just gave the boys each an empty water bottle, filled it about 2/3 full with warm water. We also added a few drops of dish soap to keep the bubbles bigger. This would have been extra cool if my dish soap was red in color, but instead it was green which is still fine. Then we added 2 tablespoons of baking soda to each bottle. I put each bottle in a glass bowl to hold the "lava" that was about to come. Lastly, I slowly poured vinegar in to each bottle and the eruption began. I'm pretty sure this would be cool for any kid, but the boys especially thought this was pretty neat! You can see from their reactions of watching the lava pour out. This gave us a good opportunity to talk a little about volcanoes and watch lava is without being too detailed. All in all, it was a pretty fun activity!