We seem to be on a bit of a Geology theme as the moment so I thought I would share from resources that we have been using on our Rock madness.  I actually bought the Rock Factory book last year hoping it would spark some interest but at the time the kids were busy with other topics so it was left alone.  After working through some of the Geology lab for Kids activities one of my kids remembered the book and we dug it out and had a good read.  I must say it explains everything very nicely.

The book starts off with a bit about the different layers of the earth and compares it to a soft-boiled egg (my kids loved this) and talks about how our stone would have gradually worked its way up through the mantle. It talks about how our rock is made from minerals and compares the mixture of the minerals to baking a cake and as the minerals cool they form chrystals.  It details what happens in a volcano and how our piece of stone would be affected by the magma and how it could be pushed through a crack in the earth’s surface and come out when a volcano errupts.  And what would have happened to the rock after the volcano errupted. Then it goes onto a little boy finding our stone and discovering that it was a diamond.  After that it talks about the different types of rock and sets out an experiment for the kids to do – Grow your own Crystals. The kids have found the book informative and easy to understand and it has helped explain a few facts to them (and to me).

Some examples of what the inside pages look like

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And to go with the book and our interest in Rocks we found a few worksheets from Education.com and Twinkl and created our own sorting activity (see below).

From the Education.com site (we have a free account which allows you a limited number of downloads each month).

What is the Rock Cycle

and a page describing the different  Types of Rocks

And if you have a Twinkl membership they also have a rock cycle page and they have a rock and soil fact page pack which we found interesting

We also did our own very simple home-made page.  We set up three mini pockets, one for each rock type and then we wrote out the different rock names that we are familar with and discussed which rock type they would fit under.  Really simple and easy to set up at home but it was a great way of discussing the different rock types.

We bought our Rock Factory book from Amazon

The Rock Factory: A Story About Rocks and Stones (Science Works)

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