Rockin' It

Continuing on with our unit study on rocks and minerals...


One of the features we discussed about rocks was that they are not alive. We talked about what it meant to be alive, gave examples of things that were alive and things that were not alive, then I had Madison draw pictures of both categories.

Not Alive
The things she came up with were a pencil, paper, a shirt, pants, shoes, a volcano, a car, a house, rocks, a chair, a dresser, and a TV.

In her Alive category, she drew pictures of girls, a flower, grass, a dog, a duck, and a bird.

For a fun art project the kids painted rocks, then I painted the letters of their names on them.

We are attempting to make rock candy. I realize that this project takes some time, and as you can see, our string only has a few little candy crystals on it. Hopefully they will grow larger because my kids are really excited about this!

The recipe we used for the rock candy came from this site: http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Rock-Candy

We talked about crystals and about the various things that are made from crystals.

I found this crystal growing kit at our Family Dollar store, and like our rock candy, we are still in the process of seeing our crystals grow.

Here is what they look like as of today.

We spent one day discussing volcanoes in depth. We read through this book, "Volcanoes" and talked about how volcanoes are made of rock, and lava (magma) is hot, melted rock.

I really wanted to show the kids how a volcanic rock floats, and my husband thought he might have found a volcanic rock for us. It definitely looked like one, however, when we put it in water, it sunk. I guess looks can be deceiving.

We created our own volcano out of homemade play dough. We put baking soda inside it, then we poured tinted vinegar into it. The kids really had fun watching our volcano "erupt".

Here is the video of our volcano erupting.

One final rock-themed activity that I wanted to accomplish was reading the old folk story "Stone Soup" and then making our own stone soup for supper one day. I requested the book from the library quite some time ago but it still hasn't come in, and we are ready to move on from our rock lesson. I think what I might have to do is find the story online and read it to the kids, because I just don't know how much longer the book is going to take to come in at the library.

Our next theme is Jewels/Gems, so it should be a pretty easy transition from rocks and minerals.

Rock On!

"I listen and obey; I build my life on the Rock."

We have been learning about rocks and The Rock - Jesus Christ. There is so much to do in this unit that this is one that will actually take us all week to complete.

We started off the unit by learning the story of the wise and foolish builders from Matthew 7:24-27. Then I taught the kids the song "The Wise Man Built His House Upon the Rock." We discussed why it was foolish for the man to build his house on the sand and how we can be more like the wise man who built his house on the rock. We talked about how when we listen to Jesus' words and obey Him, it is like we are building our house on the rock.

We headed outside to go on a "rock walk", but we didn't have to go far. Our driveway is made completely up of rocks, so we collected a bunch of them to use for various activities.

We first counted how many rocks we collected - there were 79 in all. Then we spent quite a bit of time examining the various colors, textures, sizes, and kinds of rocks. We briefly learned about the major kinds of rocks - igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary. However, those are big words and big concepts for a Kindergarten class, so we didn't spend too much time on them. But we were able to compare some of the rocks that we had collected in our driveway, to some of the examples shown in the books we had read.

Then we did some sorting. We sorted them according to size, then we sorted them according to color. Each time we sorted them, we determined which group had the most rocks, and which group had the least amount of rocks.

We did a little science experiment called Sink or Float? I collected a variety of items and the kids had to guess whether they thought the item would sink or float when they put it in a container of water. Here you can see that the yellow ball floated.

But all of our rocks sank. We learned that there is only one type of rock that actually floats and that is a volcanic rock. However, since I'm fresh out of volcanic rocks, we weren't able to see the example of a floating rock.

I had the kids draw pictures of the items in the Float and Sink categories, based on what we found in the experiment.

Float
a yellow, plastic ball
a plastic spoon
a pine cone
a frog tub toy
a ping pong ball
*a pink Mega Block

Sink
a paperclip
a key
a plastic, toy ring
a toy dinosaur
a small rock
a large rock
*a pink Mega Block

*Did you notice the pink Mega Block ended up in both categories? That's because it initially floated, but once it filled up with water, it sank. So we decided to include it in both categories.

We spent some time arranging the rocks in fun shapes and designs.

And we even spelled Noah's name with them.

I loved this book, "Rocks! Rocks! Rocks!" by Nancy Elizabeth Wallace. It was perfect for explaining concepts like bedrock, erosion, and how rocks are formed, in a story format with language that was easy for the kids to understand.

Here are a couple other books we read:
"The Magic School Bus Inside the Earth" by Joanna Cole & Bruce Degen (It did briefly mention that seas and rock layers were formed millions or billions of years ago, but I just skipped over that portion.)
"Rocks & Minerals" by Dr. R. F. Symes (This book is for older students because it is more "wordy", but we have been looking at pictures of the various kinds of rocks in it.)

We read "A Rock Grows Up" by Randi and Michael Goodrich, which again, is probably geared more towards older kids. There was a storyline to the book though, and even though there were some big words and concepts in the book, the kids enjoyed hearing the story and looking at the pictures.

We also decorated our lowercase "r" by hot gluing rocks to it.

More on rocks in the days to come!