Hello! I’m so glad you’ve stopped by! Today I’m going to share my lesson plan for Rocks, Minerals & Jesus. As you know, I like to bring in my faith to every lesson I teach to my kids. This is just ONE of the many reasons that I LOVE TO HOME-SCHOOL!
It was so cold and slippery out that even the school bus decided to stay home this morning. There was a cold blizzard blowing and I thought nobody would show up, but I was wrong! What it really meant was that we were delighted with lots of extra visitors. Anaya was glad because she doesn’t like being the only girl at my home school classes 🙂
Today was a perfect homeschooling day. I spent the morning gathering all the supplies that I have been collecting to start teaching the kids about 🌑 Rocks, Minerals and 💎 Crystals.
As soon as the kids saw the table covered in our precious rock collection, including diamonds and fools gold, they were pretty excited!
We spent at least an hour reading a million books about gemstones, and rocks and how they are formed. I had just been collecting books on gemstones from the thrift store since I decided to teach this lesson last week.
Whenever I’m doing my cleanup or preparation for the next activity, I put on YouTube movies so the kids can watch movies on how rocks are formed. Today we watched these ones:
*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CeuYx-AbZdo
*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsIHV__voMk
*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVy3dzLSMLg
After the movies, I sent all the kids on a rock hunt.
I printed out THIS rock identification table, and once the kids came in with the different rocks they had found we spent some time trying to match them up with what we saw on our table. I was completely amazed at how many rocks we actually found that were on the chart, just from searching outside!
After all of that we did some watercolor paintings of our jewels.
While they were painting I led them into a discussion about the apostle Peter and Jesus Christ.
I read this scripture from Mathew 16:18
“You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Our Lord then declared to him: “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.”
I asked what would happen if the wind blew on grass, or a strong mountain. Obviously the grass would bend but the mountain would not. When we build our testimonies on JESUS CHRIST it’s the same as building our testimony on a rock. It’s strong and unmovable.
I love 😍 it when I can share my faith with these eager, and attentive kids. I think it really means a lot to them to be able to learn in such natural and normal ways, and I’m so glad that we are doing this together at home!
Peter P. brought his microscope so we were happy to check out all our rocks and crystals. It was super awesome, and we could even see the crystal formations in our pink Himalayan salt as well as our sugar. The best looking rock was our pyrite, or fools gold.
I love this little microscope because it’s super affordable, but really does a good job of magnifying things. Peter bought from discovery toys.
Afterwards we made Geode cookies with real glass candy crystals for our rocks, minerals & crystal lesson plan!
The older girls did some water color and we delivered some of the extra cookies to our neighbor who helped us the other day.
RECIPE FOR SUGAR COOKIES
- 1 cup of Soft butter
- 1 cup of white sugar
- 1 large egg
- 1 tsp Vanilla
- 2 tsp Baking Powder
- 2 3/4 white flour
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.
Mix together butter, sugar and egg. Add vanilla, and then add baking powder & flour until everything is light and fluffy. Cook for 7-10 minutes.
RECIPE FOR ICING
- 3 cups powder sugar
- 1/3 cup butter
- 1 1/2 tsp vanilla
- 1 tbsp milk
- Mix everything together with a mixer until it’s fluffy.
We first spread the icing over top of the cookies and then put them in the microwave for 10 seconds so they went really nice and smooth. Afterwards we used food coloring in a paint tray to paint our cookies and then we decorated it with the glass candy that we made.
RECIPE FOR GLASS CANDY
- 1 1/2 cups of corn syrup
- 1 cup of water
- 3 1/2 cups of sugar
- Once hardened you can just crack it with a fork or spoon by hitting it into desired size of pieces. Once it is sufficiently hardened and cool to the touch, just crack it with the back of a spoon or hammer 🙂
Mix everything together in a pot over the stove and stir it until the sugar is dissolved. Once the sugar is dissolved and it starts to boil then DON’T stir! Leave it for 10-15 minutes until it’s a light caramel color or comes to 300 degrees if you have a candy thermometer.
We pretty much had the best time ever learning about Rocks, Crystals and Jesus!
Plus our house is now full of pretty cookies, pretty, candies, pretty watercolors and a lot of happy kids!
Leave a comment, and tell me how you relate Rocks, Crystals & Minerals to Jesus 🙂
xoxo
Beckyboo