R is for Rock

I think we had the most contributions ever for the next two lessons. Grandpa Mark sent us the most awesome rock collection. We can’t wait to show it off to the boy next door who keeps his rock collection in a used pizza box. We also loved the presentation that Uncle Ammon sent about different kinds of rocks and how they are formed. It went perfectly with what we learned from library books and our curriculum. We spent our first day looking at these great collections, and read a book called “The Magic School bus Goes to the Middle of the Earth” in which we learned a bit more about how rocks are formed—from magma, heat, pressure and time, just like Ammon said! The second day, we went outside and collected rocks of our own. We tried to find varied shapes, sizes, textures and colors. Then we came inside and sorted them by color, by size, by texture, etc. The next day, we went back through them and sorted them by metamorphic, sedimentary, and igneous. We also tried to grow our own crystal garden using salt, water and liquid bluing on sponges. I don’t know what we did wrong, but instead of growing up, like I have seen them do, they spread far and wide, all over the outside of the dish, the tray it was sitting on and even a little on the window sill! Yikes! But they did grow…

We also checked out a DVD of “Journey to the Center of the Earth” with Pat Boone. Classic.
Our lesson from the Bible was to “build our lives on the Rock,” Jesus Christ. We read the parable of the wise man and the foolish man. We even tried building with blocks on a big rock and in the soft dirt next to it and then flooding the houses with a whoosh of water. Sure enough, the house that wasn’t on the rock toppled and the house on the rock stood firm. We learned about builders using a “plumb line” to build their house, and using the same parable, we decided that the plumb line we follow for our lives should be God’s Word.