Explore Rocks and Minerals!: 25 Great Projects, Activities, Experiements (Explore Your World) - Softcover

Brown, Cynthia Light; Brown, Nick

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1934670618 ISBN 13: 9781934670613

Publisher: Nomad Press, 2010

Synopsis

Explore Rocks and Minerals! offers kids ages 6–9 a fascinating introduction to geology. It investigates the geological forces that create and transform rocks, outlining the life cycle of igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic rocks, and what they can tell us about the earth. It also explores fossils, and how they come to exist and are discovered.

Explore Rocks and Minerals! includes 20 hands-on activities to bring learning to life. Kids create their own crystals, sculpt edible models of the planet, and bake volcanic meringue cookies. These easy-to- follow activities require minimal adult supervision and use common household products. By combining an interactive component with jokes, fun facts, and cartoons, Explore Rocks and Minerals! provides a fun, accessible introduction to geology.

About this title

About the Author

Cynthia Light Brown is the author of Amazing Kitchen Chemistry Projects You Can Build Yourself, Discover National Monuments, Explore Rocks and Minerals!, Geology of the Desert Southwest, and Geology of the Pacific Northwest. She is a founding partner and vice president of Clover Leaf Environmental Solutions with 21 years of experience as an environmental consultant specializing in pollution prevention, toxicology, and risk assessment. She lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

From the Back Cover

Explore Rocks and Minerals! offers kids ages 6 9 a fascinating introduction to geology. It investigates the geological forces that create and transform rocks, outlining the life cycle of igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic rocks, and what they can tell us about the earth. It also explores fossils, and how they come to exist and are discovered.

Explore Rocks and Minerals! includes 20 hands-on activities to bring learning to life. Kids create their own crystals, sculpt edible models of the planet, and bake volcanic meringue cookies. These easy-to- follow activities require minimal adult supervision and use common household products. By combining an interactive component with jokes, fun facts, and cartoons, Explore Rocks and Minerals! provides a fun, accessible introduction to geology. Explore Rocks and Minerals! meets common core state standards in language arts for reading informational text and literary nonfiction and is aligned with Next Generation Science Standards. Guided Reading Levels and Lexile measurements indicate grade level and text complexity.

From the Inside Flap

Explore Rocks and Minerals! offers kids ages 6–9 a fascinating introduction to geology. It investigates the geological forces that create and transform rocks, outlining the life cycle of igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic rocks, and what they can tell us about the earth. It also explores fossils, and how they come to exist and are discovered.

Explore Rocks and Minerals! includes 20 hands-on activities to bring learning to life. Kids create their own crystals, sculpt edible models of the planet, and bake volcanic meringue cookies. These easy-to- follow activities require minimal adult supervision and use common household products. By combining an interactive component with jokes, fun facts, and cartoons, Explore Rocks and Minerals! provides a fun, accessible introduction to geology. Explore Rocks and Minerals! meets common core state standards in language arts for reading informational text and literary nonfiction and is aligned with Next Generation Science Standards. Guided Reading Levels and Lexile measurements indicate grade level and text complexity.

Reviews

This offering from the Explore Your World series introduces budding geologists to basic information about rocks and minerals. The authors examine the earth; minerals and crystals; igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic rocks; and fossils. For each topic, they present a brief discussion, define technical terms, offer sidebars with intriguing details (and jokes), and provide several projects that demonstrate key concepts introduced in the text. Activities include creating salt-crystal models, Epsom salt stalactites, and an edible model of the earth and its layers. Stone’s black-and-white illustrations—especially the cartoon mole sporting a miner’s hat who guides readers through the text—help to clarify technical matters and elucidate steps in the projects. Although the main text sometimes gets lost among the many sidebars, the suggested activities are well chosen, carefully explained, and require easily accessible household items. Appended with the usual back matter, this is similar in scope to Cindy Blobaum’s Geology Rocks! (1999) and makes a good choice for classroom science units. Grades 3-6. --Kay Weisman

Edition details

• Publisher: Nomad Press
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1934670618
• ISBN 13: 9781934670613
• Binding: Paperback
• Illustrator: Stone Bryan
• Number of pages: 96