Seabury kids are natural scientists and seem to naturally gravitate towards rocks. They are on the look out for different ones, they collect them in their desks and in their pockets, they love to look at them with magnifying glasses, and they love to sort them.
1. And so, for our official study of rocks, we began by doing these types of things.
Sorting
Describing
Labeling (wood colored)
Displaying
2. We then began the Scientific Process with I think, I wonder, and I discover.
One of our big questions was "What are the three types of rock?"
Some of our "I thinks" were:
- The three types are lava, shiny, and land.
- The three types are earth, shiny, and crystal.
- The three types are lava, water and land.
- Scientists cut rocks in half to see.
- It depends on how they were formed. Lava makes solid rocks. Liquids make crystals.
3. We needed to do some reading and discovered what the three types are - sedimentary, metamorphic, and igneous.
4. One question leads to another. Our next question was "How does the rock cycle work?" We got out a variety of Starburst candies and did some hands-on exploration.
We cut our candies into pebbles and sediments.
With pressure and time, sediments press together and make sedimentary rocks.
Thinking like scientists, we filled out our lab reports with diagrams.
We applied heat from our hands and a lot of pressure and morphed our sedimentary rocks into metamorphic rocks.
All our metamorphic rocks were different depending on how much pressure we applied and how long we twisted and folded.
Diagram of metamorphic rock
We put our metamorphic rocks into a volcano (our microwave!) and melted them into magma.
The rocks totally changed in shape, color, and consistency.
When they cooled, they were hard igneous rocks!
Ta da! The rock cycle!!
5. We spent some time following the different arrows and saw, felt, smelled, heard (the igneous rocks snapped as we cracked them), and tasted our rocks (clean ones)!
What a great way to really experience and know the rock cycle!
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