Science Rocks!

We have been learning about rocks and minerals in science and on Friday, February 1st, we tried our hands at making some!

First up were metamorphic rocks. We learned that metamorphosis means change and metamorphic rocks form when rock from inside the earth is heated and squeezed.

I gave each student three pieces of Starburst candy and a ziploc bag.



Students had to use their hands to generate heat and pressure to mold the Starburst candy into one new rock. It wasn't as easy as it looked...








But the end result was some tasty new rocks:

Lazar, Hannah J, Sophie and Sasha show off their rocks.

Joseph, Alex, Madelief and Haydn's new rocks.

Alissa, Mackenzie, Matthew and Gian's rocks.

Tate, Marko, Matthew M and Carys show off their rocks.

Felix, Veronica and Hannah R with some tasty rocks.

Next up were igneous rocks.

Igneous comes from the Greek word for fire and igneous rocks form when magma inside the earth pushes to the surface and cools and hardens.

Our version used a crockpot to represent the (hot) centre of the earth. Mme added chocolate chips and chopped up soft caramel to make magma and, once it melted, spooned it onto a cookie sheet to cool and harden.

While the igneous rocks cooled, we moved on to sedimentary rocks.

Sedimentary rocks are formed when rocks and once-living organisms settle on the bottom of lakes, streams and oceans. These layers get deeper and deeper and the weight of all the sediment pushes down on lower layers with tremendous force. That force combines with minerals to cement the layers into rock.

To represent the layers in sedimentary rock, we started with a layer of cookie dough. We added layers of smaller rocks (sprinkles), dinosaur fossils (dinosaur-shaped sprinkles), leaves (green sprinkles) and worms (gummy worms). The mixture is then baked to cement the layers together. Mme baked another pan of the same mixture Thursday night so we were able to see -- and taste! -- the layers cemented together.


Special thanks to Ms Smith at adventuresofmssmith.blogspot.com for the great idea!!