Geodes

Back in October I saw this post by Tara... thought it looked like too much fun... and decided to make some egg shell geodes.

As I pulled out the salt and food coloring the kids gathered round... they always do when the food coloring comes out.

We mixed with warm water with the Epsom salt and added the color... then we waited.

 When we took a look sure enough there where crystals in there.

We pulled a few out to examine...

Then they sat... and sat... and sat... in their carton on the kitchen shelf... untouched... until last week.

Fionna pulled out her microscopes and started looking at some random things and Dylan joined in. I asked if they wanted to look at the geodes we made with the salt. Yes. 

We were short on egg shells when we made them and made a few with waxed paper. Those turned out great and ended up being easier to look at under the microscope. We even managed to get a tiny crystal under Fionna's new digital microscope for an even closer look. So great.

Last weekend while we were at the Museum of Natural History I happen to pick up a few geodes to have on hand. I turns out I had good timing. After looking at the egg geodes up close they were very receptive to the idea of cracking open some real live geodes.

Dylan was up for the task.

There are more precise ways to crack these open but I would have to be in charge of that process and what fun is there in that?

We cracked open two and found they were very different inside. Dylan's was filled with white crystals and Fionna's had dark, almost black crystals. So fun to see the difference.

They spent over an hour looking at them under the microscope...

Then decided to head out for a rock hunt around the yard... and neighbors yards... and across the street the the beach...

All the rock and mineral guide books were gathered and we perused them over lunch looking at all the rocks and gems and making guesses at what they had found. We read about how geodes are formed. Looked at diagrams of the earth and read about how volcanos work.

Dylan has decided that he is going to travel the world to find all the "pretty gems" and have a big collection when he grows up.  I think he just might do that!

We have seen collections displayed in a typesetters tray like this one... maybe someday we will get all these rocks they are collecting organized!