DAY TWO: Mineral Merriment
Welcome to our “Rocking Rock Research! – An Amazing DIY at Home Camp” series. For Day 2, we focused on minerals. We read through and watched a few online videos, created some geological snacks, and performed a science experiment. Read on for more details!
A TYPICAL DAY
All kids are different and you can definitely vary your day with whatever works for you 🙂 But the gist of our day having our kiddos focus on some work books or online learning tools in the early morning, an intro to the day’s theme after they were done, some videos around lunch time, and themed activities (reading time, writing time, crafts, food crafts/snacks, and games or experiments) in the afternoon. Feel free to pick and choose whatever works for you 🙂
INTRO
For our intro to the topic, we visited a page from generationgenuis: Rocks & Minerals for Kids. Unless you have the subscription, you won’t be able to watch the video, but we the reading materials are available as well as a video on an experiment that we followed for our afternoon activity.
WHAT TO WATCH
For our video of the day, it actually tied into our food craft / snack. We
FOOD CRAFTS / SNACKS
For our themed snack of the day, we compared an apple and peach together. We also created the structure in the second video but replaced the marshmallows with blueberries to make it a bit healthier.
READING
It’s no secret that reading helps prevent that summer slide. Some even say this is the most important. For our mineral themed day, we picked “Rocks and Minerals”
- National Geographic Readers: Rocks and Minerals by Kathleen Weidner Zoehfeld
WRITING & WRITING PROMPTS
Just like reading, writing helps prevent that summer slide by both encouraging their creativity but also their motor skills and penmanship.
If you’ve got a little one, have them trace words related to the theme: ROCK, MINERAL
If you’ve got older children, have them write a sentence or two up to a page or two (depending on their age). Encourage them to be creative AND give reasons for why they made certain choices.
- If you found a secret cave filled with one type of mineral, which one would you like it to be and why?
CRAFTS
For our craft of the day, we followed the generationgenius activity: Grow Your Own Mineral Crystals Activity for Kids. We let the kids shape their pipe cleaners as they wanted, so they had a lot of fun doing this activity. We let the solution sit overnight & had crystal shapes in the morning 🙂
STEM ACTIVITY
For our science activity, we picked up a Mineral Science Kit. Like the rock kit, the contents are a bit small but well categorized & labelled, so it was easy for the kids to figure out what was what.
THANK YOU!!!
Thank you for checking out our at home play / summer camp guide! If you enjoyed this article, please let us know what you think in the comments below and/or follow us on Pinterest
Also, if you haven’t already, check out some of our other at home play / summer guides: DIY Summer Camps.
Happy Learning!
