Russell Ramblings: Rock Week

AJ & CJ building a volcano

For the past few weeks in our My Father's World kindergarten curriculum, we have been focusing on wild animals.  I was ready for a new topic, but...rocks?  Now, being a mom-of-boys for six plus years, I know boys love rocks, so I pretended to be thrilled about rocks.  And, until the end of the week, I was!  Especially the suggested "book basket" books about rocks!

We kicked off the week with learning the three types of rocks - igneous, sedimentary, & metamorphic.  We discussed how Jesus is a rock and learned the words to the hymn "On Christ the Solid Rock."  We also sang "The Wise Man Built His House upon the Rock" each day of the unit.

The second day of the unit, we went rock collecting!  I each of the boys an egg carton & turned them loose in the back yard.  One egg carton wasn't enough, and each boy ended up with two.  After collecting them, I let them wash & scrub each rock to make their collection shine.

After their collections were all cleaned up, we organized the rocks by size & color.  They each picked their favorite rock and sketched it in their nature journal with 2 adjectives.  We also counted them by 2s and discussed the term "dozen."  For JJ's preschool lesson that day, he made the letter R with rocks (see the worksheet on Pinterest here.)

Then things got really exciting.  We made a volcano model (since igneous rocks come from lava that hardens after volcanic eruptions).  I definitely wowed the boys with this simple baking soda-and-vinegar volcano.  Totally worth the mess!

I taught the boys how to play Mancala - a simple rock game.  (See youtube video on how to play here.)  I made our own board with an egg carton.  I cut the top off, and then cut it in half.  I super-glued the halves on the end of the egg carton bottom to make the mancalas.  I painted the mancalas and the corresponding row of egg carton holes to help them see which side is "theirs."

My homemade mancala board

Let me end with the aforementioned "book basket" books that were our favorites this week.  (Let me preface this with the fact that some of them do mention "millions of years.")  Here were our 3 favorites.

1. My favorite was Rocks in Head by Carol Otis Hurst - a book about a boy with a passion for rocks who grows up, survives during the Great Depression, and eventually lands a dream job having to do with rocks.  

2. The boys hands-down favorite was How to Dig a Hole to the Other Side of the World by Faith McNulty.  I told my husband this is such a boy-book (in a good way).  A boy digs a hole to the other side of the world (did you know if you start in America, you come up in the Indian Ocean?).  He goes through all the layers (with the help of his custom no-spaceship with a fireproof jacket & drill on the nose, etc).  We read this book over & over!!  

3.  Another favorite was Dave's Down-to-Earth Rock Shop by Stuart J. Murphy.  This book clearly explained the different types of rocks and the Mohs scale of hardness.  The children enjoyed the ending.

So, now I guess you could say we have rocks in our heads, but more importantly, I hope we are standing more firmly on the ROCK!  Thanks for stopping by!

This post is linked to the weekly wrap-up at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.