To prepare the rocks for study, they must first be washed. Provide the children with a pail or plastic pan, several small brushes like toothbrushes, and some drying towels. Discuss the best place to wash the rocks. Outdoors is good! When ready, fill the pan/bucket with warm water and add soap. Moving to the washing area, children should proceed to wash each rock, making them very clean. Washed rocks are placed on the drying towels and left for an hour to dry. If you want, you can show them on the clock when to check to see if drying is finished. When the rocks are dry bring them to your science area for later study.
A good check on the washing success is to pour the wash water into a clear gallon container. Sediment from the rocks, as dirt, will settle to the bottom of the jar. Look at the small rocks and sand. Can you tell which rocks were the dirtiest and shed the most particles. The breaking down of rocks is called Weathering. What color was the most common sand and what color was the water? Finally, place the jar out of the way and leave it a couple of days for everything to settle out. If you had a million years of collecting dirt and sand, and that sediment was buried under even more sediment, compressing it, it could form new rock, maybe Sandstone.
Next. Doing things with and studying rocks
Bring your collection of rocks out from the washing. Enough rocks is more than 100 clean and BEAUTIFUL rocks. Lay them out so you can see all the rocks. First put all rocks that look alike together. Are they all the same kind of rocks? Different ones should have their own piles. If you want to remember which pile is which, number paper plates 1 –10. Then, have a scribe keep a notebook, noting the plate numbers and the observations you made.
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