We had the most wonderful afternoon of rock collecting.  On the drive to the bay we read the book, Everybody Needs A Rock by Byrd Baylor.  The story eloquently outlines the “rules” of finding just the right rock.  With her advice lingering in our minds we combed the water’s edge for some special finds.  It was a wonderful feeling to slow down enough to appreciate the intricacies of each little pebble.

When we returned home with all of our treasures we watched a couple of helpful videos to answer some of the questions that came up during our search (see links below).  The girls also strengthened their skills in classifying and sorting by looking through our rock collection and brainstorming different categories for organizing the stones.  I printed their list of attributes on labels and put them on blank index cards.  Then we used the index cards to play a variety of sorting games. The level of focus and the length of the girls’ attention span during this experience was amazing!

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Materials & Resources

1. • Rock Cycle Video - National Geographic
   

2. • Types of Rocks Video - Teacher Tube
   

3. • Rocks Tell Stories - Smithsonian
   

4. • Igneous Metamorphic Sedimentary Rock Gallery
   

5. • Pretty Pebbles by Photographer Alicia Bock