Today we started our mineralogy block. We didn’t plan it that way but sometimes life brings opportunities you don’t want to miss out on! My dad called to say that he would be in town doing a rock show (he exhibits and sells minerals and gems around the country as his retirement job – he was an aerospace engineer, owned a boat shop and then a quality control engineer) and needed some help setting up. I quickly changed gears for the day, went to my files, printed out the block on sixth grade mineralogy and told the girls to get out the rocks we have under the table. (Sofi has a school friend that comes to home-school with us on her days off school. LOL she thinks it is fun to go to school on her days off??). It was such a wonderful lesson because right after-wards we were able to see “first hand” what all the rocks looked like and the girls were in awe of the different rocks that people were setting up. Nobody was at the hall yet – just the vendors (it opens tomorrow) so it was fantastic – everyone had time to answer their questions and they were able to touch things and even help set some things out on the table for grandpa.
They both came home with an assorted bag of rocks, which, after our morning lesson, they were able to sort into Igneous, Sedimentary and Metamorphic rocks and then they did “rock trading”. Sofi, my little fashion-girl (she’s loved clothes and all things fashion since she was two LOL!) loved it when I compared the formation of igneous rocks to spilling a bottle of finger-nail polish. She could relate to this description right away! Hannah, who loves cooking enjoyed the imagery of the sedimentary rocks being like “crumbs” of other rocks. After much discussion we even created a rock recipe book and decided that next time we meet we will “cook”, “bake” and “prepare” some nice edible igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic foods 🙂
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