Crayon Rocks

Still recovering from illness we took our time homeschooling today.

We did some work on counting with 5's and 10's.   The lad is slowly figuring out the pattering though he doesn't really remember yet from one day to the next, but he remembers more quickly each time we approach it.  :)

Then we did some home safety work.   We talked about how to be safe outside when you are on your own.  And that led to how to get out of the house should something bad happen in the house.   Aka a fire.  He drew a detailed map of the upstairs and downstairs of the house with where to go when in trouble.   (we'd meet at the mailbox).  We walked through the house and said okay...how do you get out of this room?  where would you go if trapped here?   what happens if you get caught on fire (stop drop and roll).  What happens if you are in a room with fire?  (get down and crawl)   What happens if you can't leave your room?   put something in front of the door, open the window and call LOUDLY for help.    We had fun doing this, and the lad learned a lot.  It was interesting listening to him come up with various ideas, and then figuring out if they would work or not.   And him figuring out that a broken leg was better than a dead boy.

Then we took a break.. I was tired.  The lad was sweet and made a simple lunch for us.  Crackers, cheese and pudding.  Worked for me!  :)

Then on to do some science.  A while ago I had pinned a crayon rock idea from Momma Owl's Lab.   By the way, if you need an invite to Pinterest let me know I'll happily send you and invite.  :)

I figured this would be a good idea for a recovery day.   :)   This was a carry over from when we dug for gems and rocks a while back.

We had fun, we learned a lot.  

We grabbed our bag of old icky crayons.  It took a while to figure out the best way to shave them.  A knife wasn't a good idea so then we pulled out the vegetable peelers.  That worked better for the soft crayons, the hard crayons I just basically chipped into small pieces.

The first step was to make  Sedimentary rocks.  Layer shaved crayon, wrap in aluminum foil, put in clamp. :)

Then we moved on to Metamorphic rocks.    Knowing that these can be made through pressure or through heat we decided to see what would happen if we made sedimentary rock first and then heated it.  We also did one without putting pressure on it.  We had planned to do a third one and put pressure on it afterwards but after it melted we didn't see much point in doing that.  :)   But it was interesting since we did two of the three with double thickness aluminum foil and one with four times thickness.   The four times thickness melted much slower, the pressured one melted even more slowly.

just in the pot.

safety an important consideration

no pressured, double thickness 3 minutes

after six minutes, four times thickness and pressured.   

First one is - no pressure, double thickness almost solidified

When we finished these we moved on to making igneous rocks.   Igneous rocks are formed when magma (molten rock) cools and solidifies   The lad had a difficult time remembering what magma rock was  so I showed him this video.

 

Then he said "MELTED ROCK MOMMY!" 

We melted some rock.  

 melting the "rock"

i forgot about plastic and heated and melted my spoon :(

rather cool eh?

Our end result had me wanting to crush a bunch of ice and do it all over again, but I ran out of energy and decided it could wait until another day.  :)