This month the children of School-age 2 have taken up geology, exploring the various rocks and stones found around the schoolyard and putting together their individual prior knowledge to make connections and hypotheses. In the gravel path down to the storm drain near the climber, Hannah and Willa collected a small pile of pink and white stones, and Willa approached educator Dean saying, “This one’s really shiny, what is it?”. Upon learning that it was quartz, the two of them employed the help of a handful of peers to find more, and brought the first stone inside to look at under the microscope. They discovered that it was made up of tons and tons of square crystals and invited everyone to take a look.
The next day educator Dean brought a piece of pure quartz for each child and told them that he’d gotten them from a vein up north. This sparked a conversation about where rocks come from and how they are formed. Charlie and Gabriel were particularly excited to learn about igneous rock.
The children were then presented with trays of small rocks collected from the beach in Bayfield to sort through and collect, learning to identify quartz, basalt, granite, and chert along the way, as well as fossils. Five minutes into the activity, Elliot said, “There’s so many rocks, can we do this tomorrow?”. Of course we can! So we continued our exploration the next day. By then, many children had moved on from asking “What kind of rock is this?”, to “Is this a _____?” and inputting names of rocks they had learned. As the children grew more confident in their classification skills, they began to help each other identify rocks. Great job School-age 2!
