Teaching Kids About Rocks, Minerals and Fossils

During the summertime we’re always looking for fun and educational things to do with our grandchildren. Just because school’s out for the summer (and soon the kids will be going back), doesn’t mean that learning ends! Nope, it doesn’t and it’s our job to continue to enrich the minds of our children.

For the past few weeks we’ve spent some considerable amount of time teaching our 8 year old granddaughter about rocks, minerals and geodes. Since starting our projects, she’s turned into a little rock & fossil collector which has been fun too!  Here are some of the things that we’ve done.

Teaching Kids About Rocks, Minerals and Fossils

1. We’ve went out for walks in the mountains and along the river to look for special rocks, geodes and for fossils. We were surprised that we’ve found quite a few during our “nature walks” and she’s added them to her growing collection.

2. After each outing we’ve gotten online and looked up information on the various rocks and/or fossils that we’ve found. In addition, we spent one afternoon at the public library going through books that had information too.

3. We ordered some geodes from online and had ourselves a little geode busting party! The Princess used a hammer and an old towel to bust open her new geodes to see what was inside. These particular ones were all rock crystals and quartz. She then sat down with index cards and wrote up a FACTS card on each one that she smashed. This helps to reinforce what she’s been learning and she can refer back to those index cards to refresh her memory.

4. We found a place about an hour away where kids can go dig in the dirt and rocks to look for gems, geodes and fossils. This place only charged a few dollars to get in and they run various educational programs to go along with it. I highly suggest you look for places like this in your area too. Very educational and fun!

5. One afternoon we sat down together and assembled a rock and fossil collecting kit. We purchased an over-sized plastic embroidery floss container from the craft store. We wrote up labels for her “treasures” and labeled the cavities inside the container. She then placed her goodies into the container for safe keeping. She’s going to take it to school (once school starts back) to show her new teacher and classmates.

We’ve done even more than what I’ve listed above, but wanted to give you a little taste of some of the things we’ve been doing to teach our granddaughter all about rocks, minerals and fossils. Do you do any of these things with your children and/or grandchildren? Got any other ideas for us?

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