Rock Unit
If you follow me on instagram, you may have seen me posting about our rock unit this week. We don't follow a strict "unit studies" style of learning, but I like to do an in-depth unit study at least once a month. It makes the learning celebratory in a way that only a unit study can do. However, a lot of prep goes into them so it's not manageable for me to do them every week. I had a lot of interest in posting my sources so below is a breakdown of my lesson plans!
We had a crystal growing kit sitting in our closet for over a year so I figured it was a good time to use it. It was so easy to use and had everything in it to conduct the experiment. Nothing worse than opening up a science kit and then having it require a bunch of additional stuff. We used this kit. We are on day 5 of growing the crystals and they are looking good!
My main source for our rock and mineral collection came from the awesome game, "Rock On". I highly recommend this game for anyone interested in rocks and minerals! Most of the beautiful printables that we used this week came from a set that I bought from Brave Grown Home. They are currently on sale so I also highly recommend jumping on that ASAP!
I always like to start out our units with beautiful and engaging books. I got most of these at the library but we had to own "A Rock is Lively" to our collection because it's just too good!
Books used:
- My Little Book of Rocks, Minerals and Gems by Claudia Martin
- DK Eyewitness Books: Crystal and Gem by R.F. Symes
- A Rock is Lively by Dianna Hutts Aston
- Minerals by Chris Oxlade
- Nature Anatomy by Julia Rothman
- Maps by Alekzandra Mizielinski
We had a crystal growing kit sitting in our closet for over a year so I figured it was a good time to use it. It was so easy to use and had everything in it to conduct the experiment. Nothing worse than opening up a science kit and then having it require a bunch of additional stuff. We used this kit. We are on day 5 of growing the crystals and they are looking good!
For a history focus, we learned about the first american female geologist, Florence Bascom. What an amazing individual! When we learn about historic figures I always have them make a journal page in their sketch books. If you'd like to learn more about Florence, here is the wiki page.
We focused our spelling words to fit the geology theme. Zoey surprised me by spelling them all correctly the first go. When writing gets tiresome I like to pull out our moveable alphabet for spelling practice.
Des worked on letter formation using rocks and spelled out "rock" with the moveable alphabet. This sheet is from Living Montessori.
We did an art focus by studying different styles of painting of rock formations. I looked up different art on Fine Art America and printed them out and laminated the cards. We talked about each painting and then the kids each chose one to paint.
For a geography focus, I printed off natural and man-made rock formations cards from Every Star is Different . I had Zoey locate them on the world map and mark it. We used our Maps book to learn more about each country.
We used our 3-part cards from the Brave Grown Home gemstone pack to first, have Des find the matching card and name. This was great practice for him since he is just beginning to read. We then took out our rocks and matched them up to the cards.
To learn more about how the rock cycle works, we did an awesome science experiment with crayons. I wish I had better documentation from this experiment because it was so fun! But you can use this youtube tutorial for a better explanation. We also colored our own rock cycle worksheet from a printable I got from Pinay Homeschool from signing up as a subscriber (it's free!)
The highlight for both kids was excavating rocks! I bought this kit on a whim from amazon for about 12 dollars. I laughed because later on in the day I found another kit hidden away in our closet that Zoey must have received as a gift at some point. Perfect, the kids could each do their own. This activity had them chiseling away for an hour, happily! They kept exclaiming how much fun it was and how cool it was. I can't say enough good things about this kit! After they excavated, they washed them and sorted the rocks. They used their identification cards to identify which rocks they found.
After learning about the rock cycle and how different rocks are classified as sedimentary, metamorphic and igneous, we sorted our own rock collection into different classifications. After sorting we made our own art journal entries. I love to do it along with the kids :)
Our final activity for the week was painting rocks. In our community people love to paint rocks and hide them around town for people to find. The goal is to make someone smile. The kids have wanted to participate for a while but it just was one of those things that I kept forgetting to do. Yesterday we sat down and painted some rocks and then hid them! They LOVED this activity and it was so easy.
One of the main reasons I went with a rock and mineral unit is because of their great interest in minecraft. These kids have learned SO MUCH about the earth from playing minecraft, it's crazy. I don't love video games and for the most part I just tolerate their love for them. But after reading The Brave Learner last year, I learned an important lesson: lean in to the kids' interests and learning with flourish and magic will happen. You should have heard them this week, going on an on about how much they know about granite and lapis lazuli and bedrock, etc. From the love of a video game, they were able to teach ME some things! This unit was magic because I leaned into their interests. And after school finished yesterday I played Minecraft with them. You would have thought that I declared yesterday Second Christmas.
