Iceland Volcano Project~Sub Glacial

At our house we've been studying Iceland and it's unique geological landscape, the geo-thermal terrain, including volcanoes, earthquakes, glaciers, landslides, geysers and hotsprings. Much of Iceland's electricity is produced by the harnessing of these amazing powers.

This week I am hostessing our Homeschool co-op's World Traveler's Club day on Iceland. I am really excited about it! I am planning an interactive reading of an Icelandic Folk tale with fun props, an art project building Icelandic Turf houses, and tasting some Icelandic foods, such "Blood" Pudding and Astar Pungar "Love Balls".

Most of the kids will be participating by choosing a particular volcano type and choosing how they want to present it.
Jax and Jem have chosen Sub-Glacial volanoes and created a volcano out of modeling clay and submerged it in water, froze it, and plan to melt it a bit when they do their presentation. A subglacial volcano can devastate a very large area, such as they do in Iceland. When the volcano erupts, large amounts of ice melts and the pressure from the steam and lava lift up the polar ice cap "glacier" until finally a huge fast flood gushes out and destroys everything in it's path with ice chunks and boulders as large as houses getting caught in the wild torrent of freezing water!

Before the water becomes a glacier.



After the water is formed into a polar ice cap.



And here's a model of a Turf House that we created. The kids will also be making these during World Traveler's Day. I was given a whole bunch of Girl Scout 'freight' boxes that I turned inside out and then cut off the top flaps and made a door and windows with. Then we decorated with markers, crayons and Easter grass 'turf'.

Iceland has never really had trees, unless we count the 3-5' tall willows that grow like uncommon shrubs. So, building houses using boulders and volcanic rocks with grass or turf for a roof just made sense for good insulation and the availability of mostly natural found building materials. This type of housing was the original Viking and Norse style of farm house. Today most homes are made more in the style of simple modern 'Ikea' and have wooden walls and brightly colored metal roofs. But Turf houses can still be found in the countryside, as farm musuems, and in use as hostels.