Enjoy this beautiful day

A while back, the kids were fascinated by volcanos. Since the youngest is barely in elementary school, the books we checked out of the library were informative, but a bit over their heads. We found video clips of eruptions, but not good explanations of what lies beneath the surface.

As I hunted around, I stumbled upon this template for a three-dimensional model of a volcano, which unfolds to illustrate the inner workings. A few clicks later I discovered I’d stumbled upon Canon’s Creative Park, which offers templates for hundreds of paper models. From dinosaurs to the Taj Mahal, there’s a paper craft for everyone. Some of them are pretty spectacular.

We set to work on building the volcano model. The design is beautiful and the instructions were easy to follow, but this is definitely for those with advanced paper skills and a good chunk of time on their hands.

It took us well over an hour to get it all together. (We’d like to blame our sluggish pace on the fact that in the midst of turning the office upside down, we couldn’t put our hands on a single bottle of glue.) But it was fun diversion, and I think I know far more about volcanos this evening than I did this morning.