Rocks, Minerals and Fossils: Part 1

This week, we will be learning about one of my favorite subjects, which will culminate in a trip to our local rock show. We have a modestly-sized rock collection, and we add to it whenever possible. Hopefully, we find some interesting pieces! Evie loves when I get out the toolbox and just let her look through all of the rocks, minerals, and fossils. She will line them up, sort them, and put them in glass vials. At some point in the near future, I'm going to have to figure out a new storage solution, as the toolbox is quite full and not very well organized. Almost none of the pieces are labeled: I just have to remember what is what. I'd much prefer it all to be neatly squared away and easily accessible, so this will have to be a project sometime soon. Evie also has her own little nature collection, which includes some little rocks and minerals that she has found/purchased at gift shops. It's always such fun for a kid to fill up one of those little velvety pouches with as many shiny stones as they can from a giant bin. There are some fun activities for kids at the rock show, and Evie is really excited about it.

Books

• Let's Go Rock Collecting by Roma Gans
• The Extinct Alphabet Book by Jerry Pallotta
• Pebbles, Sand, and Silt by Bonnie A Piotrowski
• Gemstones by Ann O. Squire
• The Magic School Bus Inside the Earth by Joanna Cole
• Sylvester and the Magic Pebble by William Steig
• Eyewonder: Rocks and Minerals from DK Publishing
• Milo and the Magical Stones by Marcus Pfister
• The Dog that Dug for Dinosaurs by Shirley Raye Redmond

• Experiment: Crystal growing. We bought two different kits for kids. One of them came with two rocks and you put in a tray of solution and then let sit for a few hours. This one didn't turn out too well. I suspect I did something wrong to mess it up. The second one was just some colored sodium polyacrylate: the same absorbent substance found in diapers. This worked well, but wasn't too representative of actual rock crystals, apart from perhaps their shape. It was a fun sensory experience though. The cubes were very squishy, and my daughter quickly set about pulverizing them. 
• Hands-on: Collection. I brought out my toolbox full of rocks, minerals and fossils, opened it up, and let Evie rummage through it. I would point out a few and tell her the names, and she sat by herself and looked at them for a while. Then, I opened up my glass cabinet and pulled out my special pieces, such as large slabs of petrified wood, a dinosaur eggshell, a fossilized bison tooth, agatized coral, a meteorite, orthoceras fossils, ammonites and trilobites, and more. We set them all out on the table, and I let Evie touch and examine each of them, one at a time, as I told her what they were. 
• Activity: Gemstone excavation kit. We've done one of these before, and it was a lot of fun. It's also good toddler busy-work, if you have other things to get done. This time, though, I did it with her, and we took turns chipping away at the sandy brick, pretending to be gemologists. We didn't actually find anything remarkable; it's more about the activity, anyway. We got a few clear quartz and one piece of amethyst. They were all small and polished, and Evie added them to her own small rock collection.