Olympus Mons!

We have been working our way slowly through Apologia's "Exploring Creation with Astronomy" book this year. This is my first time using one of their elementary level books, though with our older son we have already used their General Science, Physical Science, Biology, Chemistry, and Human Anatomy books--all of which were excellent. I wasn't sure how the lower level books would compare--could they be just as good as the upper level books were? I am happy to report that they are every bit as good, and we look forward to using all of these books written for younger students. Excellent topics, neat projects, and most of all, always pointing the students to God our Creator.

As a closing activity to our study on the planet Mars, they suggest that the student build a model of Olympus Mons--which happens to be the largest volcano in our solar system. Alison quite happily mixed up the salt dough....

and formed her salt dough around the empty pill container. If it's a project that's messy, you can always count her in!

We had a bag of mixed rocks, so put those around the base of the volcano to make it look more realistic. She immediately sorted the rocks into color groups, and then proceded to circle the volcano each circle with a different color rock. I tried to gently suggest that it might look more like real life if the rocks were all mixed together
like they are in nature. To this she looks at me in amazement and declares "But MOM! This isn't NATURE, this is MARS!" O.K. So there you have it. Now you all know that Mars and Nature are not the same thing. Aren't you glad I told you this today? They say we are supposed to learn something new every day. So now you have your new thing for today and can stop worrying about it! ;) It's a good thing I homeschool, because just think of all the things I wouldn't learn if I didn't.

Alison did, by the way, change her mind later and go and mix up all her circles of rocks. Maybe I shouldn't have said anything to her. It's a fine line between letting them do their own creative thing, and trying to teach them what it "really" is like. I mean, after all, how realistic a volcano is our model anyway? And maybe the rocks on Mars really ARE all lined up by color....

The hard part comes next--we have to wait a day for the salt dough to dry. But if all goes well, this volcano will errupt on Friday. So if you see any smoke rising from the direction of our house on that day, it just might be Olympus Mons errupting!