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In my attempt to bring us back to learning together as a family more, I’ve been creatively trying to balance K & J’s need to learn middle school and high school geology with introducing the topic to Little E and Z.
Now obviously mixing first and third grade with sixth and ninth grades, means some very different levels of detail presented. Because I need the high school level for K, I’m using Connect the Thoughts Geology as our base geology curriculum, and then incorporating the younger kids into the hands-on activities, and adding in some notebooking and lapbooking techniques to help with illustrations and retention all around.
While we got to play with Clay this month to help understand plate tectonics, the best experiments came from smashing rocks 
Z - smashing rocks for science
Of course there was a point to smashing rocks: to understand what clues and marks geologists would use to identify rocks that may have at one time been one.
K & Jazzy comparing rock halves for a geology experiment
But it was a fun experiment, and we discoved an ant colony living inside Z’s rock, so that was a bonus biology lesson
Z & Little E got so into smashing rocks they decided to be geologists for the day and set out to invesigate all they could about the rocks and the rock fragments we had that day. And they asked me to take a few pictures to share with you:
Z & Little's Collection of Rock Fragments (that's Z's hand showing you a fragment)
And of course Little E had to get into one for you too (but she forgot to smile for some reason
Little E shows off the bigger rocks in their rock collection
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February 16th, 2011 at 9:18 pm
First of all, thank you for providing the link to the Geology curriculum you’re using with your kids. I’m very interested in trying it with my own homeschool high school aged son. Can you tell me what it consists of? Is it a textbook? Are there lesson plans or tests? And finally, about how much time are you planning on devoting to the course? I’m trying to find out if it would count as a full credit or half on his high school transcript.
I appreciate any help you can provide. Sort of new to the whole homeschooling thing, and a bit overwhelmed.
Thanks for your time,
Michael Burke
February 17th, 2011 at 3:27 am
Thanks for the questions Michael! I’ll shoot you a follow up email in the next day or two, and get a review up for you. I’m always willing to answer questions, where I can, or at least point you in a direction that I’ve found useful.
So feel free to ask away
…Shannon
February 17th, 2011 at 3:32 am
[...] I revamped the schedule. The 3Rs are of course all done separately, but we’re doing geology and geography together, and they are having fun with [...]
February 18th, 2011 at 12:48 am
[...] Feb 2011 In my Smashing Rocks for Science post, I mentioned that we are using Connect the Thought’s Geology curriculum as a framework [...]
March 28th, 2011 at 6:52 pm
[...] that there is flexibility, flexibility to educate across multiple ages, like we are doing with our geology unit study, and the flexibility to delve as deep or as shallow as you need or want, or have time for. The kids [...]