A Science Sunday

After 8 hours at Disney with our friend JT and his daughter, Addy, we needed to get a few things accomplished on Sunday. We cleaned and organized outside in the morning. Then we worked on homework that the boys didn't complete in class during the week. When I was at the school on Friday, I noticed that Gabriel's class had learned about igneous rocks. I am sure I learned about igneous rocks at some point but I couldn't remember a thing about them. I like to make sure Gabriel understands topics presented at him at school. I found a neat crayon rock experiment on Momma Owl's Lab: http://mommaowlslab.blogspot.com/2012/01/science-thursday-crayon-rocks.html Andrew shaved four different colors of rocks for us.

We made a sedimentary rock first. The kids took turns putting crayon shavings in the center of foil.

We learned that sedimentary rocks are formed by compression. The kids took turns compressing the bits of crayon but it didn't work when we opened it. Alex decided that if he stepped on it and counted to 500 that would help. He was correct. We had a sedimentary crayon rock once he was done.

Our second rock was a metamorphic rock. We learned that these rocks are formed by heat and pressure.

In order to mimic this, the kids put crayons on the foil and we made a foil boat to float in boiling water for 20-30 seconds. The crayon melted slightly and then we had to finish the job with pressure by folding the foil in half. Finally, we created an igneous rock, the one that spurred this entire science lesson. Gabriel knew immediately that it should be a black rock. We learned that is because the rock is cooled and solidified lava. A foil boat was created and placed in boiling water again. We left the boat in the water for 2 minutes. When the crayon was done melting, we stirred it with a popscicle stick.

Our final science lesson:

I'm excited to show Gabriel's teacher what we're capable of doing on the weekends.