More Rock Activities

Here are the last of our rock activities.

We broke open geodes with a hammer and marveled at the beauty inside.
O was actually a little disappointed after she opened the geodes. She thought they were going to have jewelry inside that she could put in her jewelry box :)
Since our book discussed pyramids, we decided to make a pyramid out of family reunion cups (we reuse these cups every year at our family reunion).
O also wanted to make a Sphinx, but I couldn't come up with a way to do that. Maybe we'll try to make a sand castle Sphinx on the beach tomorrow. In addition to these activities, O sorted her rock collection into an egg carton, we learned the sign for "rock," and we learned the Spanish word for "rock."

Painting with Magnets

Painting with O's magnetic "rocks" was another fun extension of our book of the week, Let's Go Rock Collecting. To do this activity, she dropped a magnetic rock in a cup of paint and then dropped the magnet onto a sheet of cardstock that was on a tray. I held the tray while she moved another magnet underneath the tray to make art. This was a lot of fun, and it was a great way to combine art and science!
We quickly found that it worked better to just squeeze a blob of paint onto the paper and drag the magnet through it. O had fun mixing the colors of paint on her paper. Also, make sure your tray is not magnetic. We tried this activity with a cookie sheet, and it didn't work very well since the cookie sheet was magnetic and therefore held the rock still :)

A Sand Volcano

This week's book is Let's Go Rock Collecting. O LOVES this book, and there are so many fun rock activities to do that I'm sure we won't get to all of them.

Our first story stretcher was making a volcano on our beach. To make the volcano, we filled a plastic bottle with lukewarm water, 2 tablespoons of baking soda, and food coloring. We took the bottle down to the beach, and built the volcano around it. Elliott poured vinegar into the bottle, and we watched the volcano erupt!
We made the volcano erupt several times, and O stirred the mixture around with a stick to make it erupt again after we took a boat ride.
O and I were both excited to have Elliott involved in some of our story stretcher activities!