Hands-On Rock/Mineral activities

[VA6336]

Besides observing, identifying and classifying rocks and minerals what can you do that's hands-on and engaging? I know we can make rock candy, but otherwise I'm sort of clueless. These activities need to be geared for the 4K-3rd grade crowd. I should also point out that I don't want to spend any money putting the activities together unless absolutely necessary!

[Jumping In Puddles]

:lurk5:

[Jen500]

We've used quartz for this activity-(just striking them together to create sparks of light)

http://www.rockhoundingar.com/quartz/experiments.html

[Mamasteff]

Earthquake activities: make your own seismograph (hang a marker by string from a table, one students shakes the table, the other pulls the graph paper slowly). Build "homes" out of sticks, "adobe" (sugar cubes or play blocks), etc in different shapes and see which ones stand up best to seismographic waves (shaking the table).

 

Go on a hike and find some rocks to try to compare.

 

Create your own "grand canyon" to show effects of erosion - basically build a big hill of dirt (or fill a large baking pan with dirt and tilt it slightly); run a faucet or slowly pour a stream of water over it to show that water washes away the dirt.

 

Build a structure out of sugar cubes and spray with a water bottle for same lesson.

 

Make "igneous rock" : Melt chocolate and pour over a hill made of aluminum foil; show how melted "rock" will flow and then harden. Chocolate chip cookies make great metamorphic rocks. Peanut butter sandwiches are perfect for sedimentary rocks.

 

Make fossils with plaster of paris/ add in shells

[mommyto3]

:lurk5:

[Erica in OR]

There are many different variations of a "cookie mining" activity floating around the internet. One is http://www.earthsciweek.org/forteachers/cookiemining_cont.html. It's labeled as 4th-8th grade, but I'm guessing there are easier versions, or you could adapt it. Students basically mine a chocolate chip cookie using tools such as toothpicks, and relate it back to actual mining/ore/rocks.

 

Erica in OR

[khope1]

:lurk5:

[Sunkirst]

We (k3 - 6th grade) did 8 weeks of geology this fall. I bought the cheapest rock collection, but we didn't use it that much. I bought Geology Rocks! and Finding Nature in the Rocks used, and got other stuff out of the library. Here's our 8 week course:

 

wk1: Plate tectonics - Read about continental drift (The Island That Moved, Geology Rocks k3 and 1st, Nature in the Rocks & How the Earth Works and bio of A. Wegner - 6th, looked at online resources about Pangaea) Did an experiment from Geo. Rocks using graham crackers and peanut butter for k&1, Expt. from HTEW about convention currents for 6th. Also demonstrated friction and played with continent puzzles.

 

Wk2: Structure of the Earth - reading in Geo Rocks and How the earth works. Made lollipop earth models out of Geology Rocks, featuring a peppermint core, marshmallow mantle and chocolate crust. Very satisfying.

 

Wk3&4: Earthquakes and volcanoes - reading from many sources (lots of specific volcano and earthquake stories). Discussion with 6th bringing together plate tectonics, friction, magma and heat expansion causing V&E. Demonstrated S and P waves with slinky (Nature in the rocks). Paper maché volcanoes, volcano diagrams, Ring of Fire maps.

 

Wk5: Minerals and Igneous rocks - Defined minerals as the building blocks of rocks, looked at the different colors in some rocks we had found and broke up the rocks (How the Earth Works) to see if we could get the flecks to separate. Ig rock - Rock candy and sugar glass expts. from Geology Rocks! to demonstrate difference in crystal sizes. Looked at igneous rocks from rock collection. Read about ex. in Eyewitness book

 

Wk6: Sedimentary rocks - Discussion of water and wind erosion and where sedimentary rocks form (How the Earth works). Expt. with different sized rocks (soil to sand to gravel to pebbles) in water - shake and let settle. Larger denser rocks settle first. Made sedimentary rice crispy treats (mixed chocolate chips into one layer, peanut butter into another). Looked at S. rocks in our collection. Looked at fossils and discussed how they form in sediments.

 

Wk7: Metamorphic Rocks and the Rock Cycle - Read about how M rocks form (heat and pressure) in Geology Rocks and Eyewitness. Looked at rock collection. Discussed where heat and pressure would occur. Expt. was adapted from a book I forgot... Make sedimentary rock out of layers of different colored plasticene (roll balls of clay and layer them). Then gently heat the clay "rock" (we used a 175 degree oven for 5 - 10 minutes - this part wasn't recommended in the guide, but our clay was too hard to work otherwise) After the heat, apply pressure; downward, and from the side mostly. Don't try to blend the colors, just meld and mash them. We didn't read about the rock cycle, we just discussed how it could occur.

 

Wk8: Visit to Natural History Museum - We took our (abbreviated :D) rock collections and a member of the geology dept. identified the rocks for us. He talked about methods for identification, and demonstrated some of the methods with our rocks (6th grader had read about ID methods and Moh's scale of hardness). Gave kids Usbourne Rock and Mineral sticker books.

 

Currently (5 weeks later), dd6 is making a "Rock Book" for her 8 IDed rocks. Once a week she gives a narration about where she found a certain rock, why it's special to her, and anything else she wants to note. She's put these rocks in a specially decorated egg carton.

[Pata]

Janice VanCleave's Earth Science for Every Kid has many experiments/activities involving rocks and minerals, such as dissolving limestone, makeing sedimentary sandwiches and others. Most of the experiments us materials already in your house or easy and affordable to get Also it should be readily available at the library, which will save you some money ;).

[Mama Anna]

PP mentioned dissolving limestone. If I remember correctly, you use vinegar. Dd really loved it when we did it with a piece of gravel we found outside. No out-of-pocket at all!

 

Mama Anna

[DB in NJ]

I taught a rock class last year at co-op. One activity we did was to whip egg whites in order to demonstrate the difference/similarity of obsidian and pumice. It was easy and fun and everybody "got it."

[Truscifi]

We like kitchen labs and use REAL Science, which has a lot of kitchen labs. We made a pizza model of a cross section of the earth, then ate it. We made 'fudge' using heated condensed milk as the magma and chocolate and butterscotch chips and marshmallows as our rocks, then ate it. We used PB&Js as our layers and smushed them together to make our sedimentary rocks, then ate them.....I'm sensing a theme here. :tongue_smilie:

 

For a non edible lab we looked at the difference between sedimentary and metamorphic rocks by putting crayon shavings in to little foil packets, one of which we smushed by whacking it with a hammer, the other of which we squeezed by hand then held over a candle flame (using tongs) for about 5 seconds, and discussed the different results.

 

There are lots of things on the internet and the Janice VanCleave experiment books are good resources too.

[VA6336]

For a non edible lab we looked at the difference between sedimentary and metamorphic rocks by putting crayon shavings in to little foil packets, one of which we smushed by whacking it with a hammer, the other of which we squeezed by hand then held over a candle flame (using tongs) for about 5 seconds, and discussed the different results.

 

 

Oooh, fire... :lol:

 

What a ton of awesome ideas! Keep 'em coming, please!

[Tam101]

:lurk5:

[2_girls_mommy]

We finished rocks/geology last month. It was a great unit. I wished I had had some of these ideas for hands on. We mostly did observing, collecting, identifying, seeing which float (pumice only), etc. We compared to non rock items like cork and wood bark. I did have a good reproducible book I bought at the teacher store to use as a unit study. It provided worksheets, activity ideas (mostly of the type listed.) stories and comprehension sheets, etc.

 

We did go to our state geology club's yearly exhibit which was awesome and coincided perfectly w/our study. That was very cool for my girls to see all of the rockhounds and their collections. I would highly recommend finding one if you have a local group!

 

For fun, one of the ladies had set up a craft table and each kid got to make a "pet rock" decorated w/lace and cloth and eyes and stickers. My girls came home and made a house for theirs, fully furnished. And my dd7 wrote a story about hers for her writing that week. We did a lot of rock stories for our reading like Sylvester and the Magic Pebble.

[Lovedtodeath]

How the Earth Works: 60 Fun Ac… This book looks really good. I got a different one in the series for only $4 including shipping.

[VA6336]

I have been taking notes furiously, but I'm going to try for one more...

:lurk5:

[AngelBee]

:lurk5:

[jacqui in mo]

Make popcorn rock. Get a piece of limestone and submerge it in vinegar. Wait a couple of days and as the vinegar evaporates, some calcium carbonate (?) type structures start growing out of the limestone. Very cool to watch. My son discovered this activity on his own. I've since learned you can buy popcorn rock kits, but if you have limestone around, you don't need to buy any kits.

[RanchGirl]

Definitely contact your state geology club as a pp mentioned. Ours held a "kids rock day" at a local rock quarry. They had samples and polishers there and had the kids search through a rock pile looking for quartz that they could then have polished and keep, or there was a booth set up to make a necklace with your stones. The kids really enjoyed it. They also enjoyed the big construction vehicles that the rock quarry had out for kids to sit in and check out!