I joined a homeschooling group and Bill, Ella, Liam and I went to our first homeschooling event. It was a geology class at Garvie's Point Museum. I was super excited to go. I haven't spent much time teaching Liam about rocks. Our Earth science studies have been mostly about the water cycle and volcanoes.
Anyway, the lecture was a little over Liam's head, but I tried to make it interesting for him. I found it really informative. He talked about how minerals are formed, how to test their hardness, and how some of them are used.
It didn't help that the room was covered in dinosaur posters and paleontologist tools that Liam was fascinated with.
The classroom was pretty awesome.
Liam's favorite part was the experiment (isn't that everyone's favorite part of a science class). We were given 3 boxes with 5 minerals in each box.
Liam loved looking at them with a magnifying glass. We were to write down their color, their luminosity (how shiny they are), their streak (scratch them against a ceramic tile), their hardness (try to scratch them with your nail, try to scratch them with a penny, try to scratch glass with them) Liam loved scratching the glass with quartz, their break line (the lecturer broke a piece of calcite into parallelogram like piece by hitting it with a piece of iron. He let Liam hold it and carry it around to show everyone), and any other special properties (Liam loved holding the flakes of mica up to the light to see how the light shines through it).
After the class was over we got to see some minerals that glow under a black light.
Then we went upstairs to the museum where we learned a little more about minerals.
And then we learned about Native Americans.
Even Baby Ella got to learn about Native American babies. "Look they were carried around just like me!"
They have a wigwam in the center of the museum that all the kids loved to play in.
and followed animal tracks. We found bunny tracks that led to a tree with moss around it, and then dog tracks.
It didn't help that the room was covered in dinosaur posters and paleontologist tools that Liam was fascinated with.
The classroom was pretty awesome.
Liam's favorite part was the experiment (isn't that everyone's favorite part of a science class). We were given 3 boxes with 5 minerals in each box.
Liam loved looking at them with a magnifying glass. We were to write down their color, their luminosity (how shiny they are), their streak (scratch them against a ceramic tile), their hardness (try to scratch them with your nail, try to scratch them with a penny, try to scratch glass with them) Liam loved scratching the glass with quartz, their break line (the lecturer broke a piece of calcite into parallelogram like piece by hitting it with a piece of iron. He let Liam hold it and carry it around to show everyone), and any other special properties (Liam loved holding the flakes of mica up to the light to see how the light shines through it).
After the class was over we got to see some minerals that glow under a black light.
Then we went upstairs to the museum where we learned a little more about minerals.
And then we learned about Native Americans.
Even Baby Ella got to learn about Native American babies. "Look they were carried around just like me!"
I found the museum really interesting.I'd love to go back when it's warmer. I bought two books about Native North Americans for Liam. One about all the different tribes in North America and one about Native North American tales.
Afterwards, we went hiking in the snow, in front of the museum.
It was a really fun and educational day!
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