February is rock month for my after school Science and Nature Lab students. I have been collecting rocks all year and even have some rocks from past years to pass out to the the children. I think they liked it!
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Egg crates make great containers for holding lots of rocks. I like the fact that egg crates don't cost anything, can stack neatly in the back of a child's closet, and keep the rocks organized.
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We placed cotton at the base of each egg hold. This keeps the rocks in place and prevents them from getting scratched.
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Students chose quartz, pyrite, marble, sulfur, diatom, mica, lava rock, magnetite, Canada rocks, geodes, and some others for their starter collections. I went to Lowes and bought a marble tile, broke it up then, tumbled it in the rock tumbler.
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Some of our marble pieces were magnetic. The students really liked that.
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We checked all the rocks in my rock box and found three of them that had magnetic properties.
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Geodes are surprising and exciting. I showed them how to open their geode. Tristan gleefully offered to give up his sock so I could demonstrate.
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The sock prevented anyone from getting harmed with flying rock debris.
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Pyrite or Fools Gold is a great rock for kids. It is also quite prevalent around here. I found most of mine around Lake Hartwell. I hid the pyrite in a tub of sand so they had to "pan for pyrite" to find their fool's gold...
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Everyone got to choose one of their rocks to put under the microscope. Here is a piece of pyrite that we magnified at 10X.
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Several of my Canada rocks have gold in them.
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The children all hoped that their Canada rock would have gold embedded inside somewhere as well.
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Quartz is another great rock that is quite prevalent around here. We washed our quartz rocks and cleaned them with toothbrushes.
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Mica is easily found near Lake Hartwell as well.
![](http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_81Nc_4nc1kQ/Sar__8jxVVI/AAAAAAAACak/Hg7obEVAhMM/s400/Mica2.jpg)
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Of course there is always time for a few diversions during lab such as Zach's sea shell collection
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and a visit from Buddy Bird!
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Next month we will study insects. Wait till you see what students get to take home!!
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