Friday, November 14, 2014

Making Mountains out of . . .

Hey look! It's me! I'm back online! 

Today, I'm going to tell you how mountains are created. I know you've probably heard that mountains are formed when tectonic plates move against each other and force the earth upward. But that's not exactly the case. Mountains are made from chicken wire and newspaper. Well, that's how Juliet and I made a mountain for her science class.



We shaped the chicken wire into a jagged mountain shape. I'm sorry I can't show this to you. I didn't think to start taking pictures until we were pretty far along. Then we covered the frame with papier mache. It looked like this:



It's important to let each layer of papier mache dry completely before adding another. We made the last layer out of plain white paper. That's much easier to paint than newspaper.


Then, we painted it gray.


Juliet added snow to the peaks (I would have made it snowier, but it wasn't my mountain). The project was supposed to be about mountain ecosystems, so she also put some animals on it. Look out, little chipmunk!


Every once in a while, I am captivated by my children's homework. It's very tempting to take over and do it myself. This was a fun one.