Crystals and Cabins

Today for science, I taught about crystals. I wanted a simple way to explain the relationship between rocks, minerals, and crystals. I found this information online, comparing rocks to a chocolate chip cookie, and minerals to the ingredients that go inside, and crystals to our human DNA that makes each mineral what it's supposed to be. Using that info, I created this worksheet. I made all the pictures and descriptions separate, so the kids had to cut them out and glue them in their notebooks. When they were done it was supposed to look like this picture below.

I thought my analogy was so great, and so simple...but it was totally lost on the kids. :) Oh well. Some day they'll flip back through their notebooks and read about it, and maybe it will make more sense then.

Then, using gumdrops and toothpicks, we built a couple of the more simple crystal structures, like salt.

And to finish off the lesson, we made our own, real live crystals, using borax and hot water. Basically, you take a mason jar, and fill it with boiling water. Then you stir in about 1/3 cup of borax (which you can find at WalMart in the laundry soap isle). Then you take a pipe cleaner and twist it into a cool shape, tie it to a string, tie the string to a popcicle stick, and hang the pipe cleaner into the borax water mixture. As the water cools, the borax will turn back into crystals and stick onto the pipe cleaner. It takes about 24 hours, so I'll have to get some pictures of the finished product tomorrow.

Next up, Wynter taught History. Today she taught us how many of the colonist got to America and knew very little about how to build a house for themselves, but that they had to do the best with the materials and knowledge they had. She gave the kids pretzel sticks, graham crackers, and frosting, and told them to go for it! It was definitely a trial and error process, which was the point, and which I also thought was SOOO good for my kids. They started out trying to make huge houses, but the frosting wouldn't support the weight. Eventually, the decided to break the pretzels down to a more manageable size and use the graham crackers for supports.