Our science cycle this coming year will touch on rocks, rock identification, natural bridges, and other geological formations.
I would like to share with you my family’s experience and some of the resources we like that will go along with this study of rocks.
My daughter has been waiting for YEARS for her opportunity to go “mining.” A few years ago we read The Mystery of the Star Ruby by Gertrude Chandler Warner (the Boxcar Children series). That book inspired the desire to go mining and find those precious stones.
This summer we finally got the chance to experience this sort of mining at the Natural Bridge Caverns just outside of San Antonio. We toured the caverns, 180 feet below ground. We observed the natural bridge over the caverns. And then, we had our mining experience. The kids purchased their bags of rocks and we sifted the dirt and rocks in the water to find our precious stones. We were given rock identification cards to figure out what all our stones were.
So, as you think about what to do to go along with science, I certainly recommend the Boxcar Children series book The Mystery of the Star Ruby. It certainly got my daughter excited about rocks!
I’m currently working on relating Science (classifications, animals, plants, geology) and Scripture and Language Arts (diagramming sentences, for example).
If you are interested in more about science that goes along with Cycle 1 of Classical Conversations, subscribe to the Cycle 1 Resources below.
Check out the Nature Conversation series, especially the one about Rocks.