Classifying Rocks

Core Learning Experience + Supplies and Equipment

  • Go on a neighborhood walk with a plastic baggie to collect rocks. Encourage searching for a variety of sizes, shapes, and colors. Also encourage decision-making skills when choosing which rocks to collect. 
  • Set out your rock collection and examine the rocks. Find the biggest, smallest, on that is 2 colors, on with a sharp point, a smooth one etc. Line the rocks up from biggest to smallest.
  • Dump a bucket of dirt from outdoors in the sensory box. Pick out all the rocks. Did you know that some of the rocks might be as small as the smallest pieces of the dirt? Count your rocks.

Possible/Expected Discoveries

  • ​Chunks of rocks come in many sizes and shapes, from boulders to grains of sand and even smaller. Much of our Earth is made up of different kinds of rocks.
  • Fossils are rocks that have the imprint or shape of a natural item from long ago. Scientists learned about dinosaurs by examining bone fossil in very old rocks.
  • What do you think will happen if you put some rocks in water? Will they melt? Will they change colors? Let’s try it.
  • Here I have a big rock, a medium rock, and a small rock. Which one do you think is the heaviest? The lightest? Hold one in each hand and tell me. Try weighing them on a balance scale

Extended Learning and Other Curriculum Areas

  • ​Have available a variety of pictures and photos of different kinds of rocks and rock formations, including Uluru in Australia
  • Try to find an area in your neighborhood where large rock face has been cut into to create a road etc, so the children can observe how different strata can be formed.
  • Decorate and paint a “Pet Rock”, and either keep it or wash it and replace it.
  • Pebble Picture – glue real pebbles on card; encourage thinking before placing them. They can be glued on a pre-drawn shape

Activity Packs and Printables

Websites

Books

​Let’s Go Rock Collecting by Roma Gans