From Snow to Volcanoes

My inlaws own a cabin in gorgeous Bear Valley and we're able to use it several times a year. A few months ago, we chose a date in March when Trevor had some time off school, invited friends, and prepared for a fabulous 5-day weekend.  It was a beautiful day when we arrived at the cabin.

It only took us about 15 minutes to dig in.  Steve lit the fireplaces and turned on heaters while Trevor and I shoveled off the deck and stairs.  Then Steve turned on the water.  The water started flowing out of the WALL instead of a more appropriate location.  Long story short, what should have been a wonderful 5-day vacation with friends turned into a 33-hour "adventure" that bore no resemblance to a vacation at all.  

We came home and washed root beer snow cone syrup out of all of our belongings (because dealing with a broken pipe and no water is not nearly as fun unless a bottle of snow cone syrup spills into all the luggage in your car).  We invited the friends who'd planned to join us at the cabin to stay over at our house.  It wasn't quite as fun as a snow trip with them would have been, but we did have a fantastic time.  We ate, drank, chatted, and played Mad Libs in the evening...

 

... and spent the next day crafting!

 

Since our snowy vacation turned into not-snowy and not-vacation, it seemed appropriate to do a craft that is the opposite of cold.  So we made volcanoes.

I gathered our materials: watercolor paper, watercolor paints (blue/purple), construction paper (brown), tissue paper (red, orange, yellow), cotton balls, scissors and glue.  We started by covering the watercolor paper with blue and purple to make the sky.  When that dried, we cut construction paper to make the main volcano and other terrain and glued it to the background paper.  Finally, we added tissue paper to make lava and cotton balls to make smoke/steam.  What I love most about this project is that they all turned out so differently.  

Here's mine:   

This is Trevor's.

 

This one is Jonna's. 

 

And here is Steve's.  

 

I'd love to see how a whole classroom of students would interpret this project.  I imagine it would make a beautiful display.  

Our vacation definitely did not turn out how we'd planned, but we still managed to have a lot of fun with some great friends.  And now we have some awesome art filling our walls.  It's all a matter of looking on the bright side, right?  :)