Volcano, Part 1

Recently, Lola and I were chatting about volcanoes. She was fascinated by the fact that where her grandfather lives, Montreal, there is a dormant volcano. I told her how we used to find lava rocks as children. She wondered if they were still hot! Anyway, it gave us the idea to make a volcano from paper mache and have it "explode". I didn't realize at the time that it was really a 2-3 day project. Step 1 was making the base and the shape of the volcano. We used plastic cups and balled up newspaper glued to a box to make our shape. Then we poured some baking soda and a few drops of red food dye into the bottom of the volcano. After we waited a day for the glue to dry, we made the paper mache solution and shredded the newspaper. Lola covered it in paper mache, leaving a hole at the top for the "lava" to come out!