Rock Tumbling

After my son showed an enduring interest in rocks and minerals, I purchased the National Geographic Professional Rock Tumbler. It comes with the reusable tumbler, a pound of rocks, a color informational booklet, the grit used in tumbling, a strainer, and a few jewelry accessories. I find it is the perfect centerpiece for a unit study on the rock cycle and can pair well with earth science, chemistry (intro to the elements), and geography. Whatever direction you and your kid want to take it.

What I love about rock tumbling with a 5-year-old is how it teaches patience. The process takes a few weeks to complete, but you get to check on your rocks every few days to see how they have changed. If your child is ready to keep a research notebook, this would be an opportunity to practice simple observation and record keeping.

Here's what the rocks looked like on arrival:

The tumbler came with 1 lb of rocks. This is what they looked like before tumbling.

To polish these rocks, there are four packets of grit that you use in series, starting with the coarsest. The tumbler consists of a motor with belts and a watertight barrel. Getting started takes only a few minutes and my son was able to do most of it himself. Just open the barrel, place the rocks inside with Grit 1, then pour enough water to cover them. Seal up the tumbler, place it on the motor, press start...and be patient. The first step takes 3-5 days at high speed.

This is what our rocks looked like after four days being tumbled with Grit 1:

These are the same rocks after about 4 days of tumbling. Smooth, but not shiny.

My kids were impressed and liked comparing the before photo to the smooth rocks in front of them! They looked shiny when wet and dull as they dried off.

The messy part of this project is switching between grits. You can do this outdoors or set up a waterproof table covering. When you open the tumbler, you are left with the rocks in a slurry of rock powder, grit, and water (which cannot go down your house's plumbing). We went outside and poured the contents of the tumbler through the strainer into a disposable plastic tray (thanks, IHOP takeout!). We rinsed the rocks to see if they had rough edges and decided they were smooth enough to move on to Grit 2. Then we poured the slurry off outside and set up the next round of tumbling.

I find it is hard to mess this project up. If the rocks hadn't been smooth enough, we could have poured the slurry back in the tumbler. If you run it too long, the rocks are just smaller than the could have been. The time it takes to wear away the rough spots varies depending on the hardness of the rocks you start with. If you have your own rocks, you'll want to tumble batches of rocks with similar hardness. Time to pull out Mohs scale! (We are already collecting rocks to use in a second batch. I am excited to see what happens to our local finds when polished!) 

I will post updates after we are finished with Grits 2, 3, and 4. If you are thinking about buying this kit, here are a couple more things you should know:

After the first batch, you'll have to get more grit and a source of rocks if you want to do more. (There are many options online for rough rocks if you aren't planning to collect your own. Grit can be purchased on Amazon, and I'm still looking into other options.) This kit comes with only enough grit for one batch. The tumbler itself is reusable and is reputed to last years.

It is a bit noisy. I find it is not quite as loud as my dishwasher. In fact, it would make a great alternative to a white noise machine! We were slow to start using it because the kids didn't like hearing the sound at night, so we ended up putting it in the garage.

I picked mine up on sale, but there is also a cheaper version by the same company. I have not tried it out, however.

Got questions? Let me know in the comments!

(The links in this post are affiliate links. It does not change the price of the items, but if you purchase something I will receive a small commission.)

Make Your Own: Story Stones

I recently ran across the idea of making story stones from Happy Hooligans. As luck would have it, I stumbled upon some river stones on clearance a few days later... then discovered an unopened container of modge podge in the garage... and then found two discarded Ranger Rick magazines at the library. The world was trying to tell me something, no?

This turned out to be an incredibly easy project that kids can help with! You start by cutting out your pictures, sizing them at least a bit smaller than the flat surface of the stones. The magazines had a lot of animal images, so I cut those out in advance. Older children might enjoy cutting pictures themselves or drawing pictures to use. I am sure stickers would also work well and have the benefit of letting younger kids get more involved in the selection process. As for me, I was excited to find a lot of pictures with word labels on them--sneaking in a few sight words and phonics practice! And the labels were helpful for the more "exotic" animals I found, like the pika. When choosing your materials, the thinner the paper the easier it is to get it to lie smooth without creases. I wouldn't recommend paper thicker than magazines unless you have especially flat stones or have a tolerance for a little puckering. (The puckering is not a problem at all, it's just a matter of preference.)

Once you have all of your pictures ready, apply a thin layer of modge podge to the stone and smooth out your picture onto it. Once it is flat, cover it with another layer of modge podge to seal it in. A sponge brush worked great for this, but any brush that won't leave a lot of texture strokes would be fine. At this point in the process, my 18-month-old got very into applying the modge podge to the stones ("Tap tap tap!") and my 4-year-old was more interested in running to the yard to look for more stones. And by the time I started working on the last stone, the first one was completely dry and ready to go. Nice! Here's a picture of this first batch:

We just tried the story stones out for the first time, letting my son pick four stones from a bag and then taking turns adding to a story. It was fodder for some silliness and he sounded out "parakeet." My daughter spent the entire story time taking stones out of the bag and putting them back in. The only change I am going to make is to have more variety in the pictures. The animals served as characters, but I'd love to have some stones for settings, actions, and emotions to give a little more of a spark to get the stories started!

Review: DIY Wind Turbine

One of the presents my son got for his birthday was the Thames & Kosmos Wind Power 2.0, a kit to build a functional wind turbine!




Wow I wish I'd had a toy like this when I was little.  Since our move last summer, we regularly drive past a wind farm with several dozen wind turbines, and they captured my son's attention.  So this gift was right up his alley!  Assembly itself has the appeal of a LEGO project as you attach connectors for the basic structure and of a gear toy as you put together the gear box and decide what ratios you want to use.  Although it turned out to be too tricky for little hands to assemble (I had some minor trouble myself--it seems better suited for man hands), my Big Boy was captivated and insisted on attaching the blades himself!  The blades are huge, very impressive at well over a foot long each.  And then we got to set it up in the back yard.  It was not a particularly windy day by local standards, but it was spinning softly on a light breeze within a few minutes.  When it turns fast enough, it generates enough current to light a red LED or power a rechargeable battery, so it has the cache of actually doing something.  And for the older and more patient kiddos, the turbine comes with a booklet with suggestions of ways you can modify the design and corresponding experiments you can run.  We will see whether there is any chance of that holding the 3-year-old's attention--I suspect that part will have to wait until he is a bit older.

Book Review: Simplicity Parenting

I just finished reading Simplicity Parenting: Using the Extraordinary Power of Less to Raise Calmer, Happier, and More Secure Kids by Kim John Payne. It is good enough that I am going to ask my very busy husband to read it. I would recommend it to current parents and ideally have both parents read it so you can discuss it and get on the same page. One thing that I really appreciate about this book is that Dr. Payne makes it clear which ideas are appropriate for which age groups and generally addresses each idea throughougly across the spectrum of ages. I actually wish I had read the book before my son was walking and talking (and I was laying the foundations of our communication and routines), so for pregnant moms-to-be, I think it would be useful and a refreshing change of pace from the normal parenting preparation bibliography.

In the book, Payne describes both the conceptual framework and nitty gritty ideas for how to bring more simplicity into our children's lives, and as a result into our lives as well. Drawing from his experience in counseling and training as a Waldorf teacher, Payne presents vignettes from his clients (families with kids from toddlers through teenagers) and cites relevant research to paint a clear picture of the role of simplicity in child development and behavior. He explains both theories of why and examples of how children and their parents are affected by a lack of simplicity and how simplifying can change how children behave, develop, and form relationships.

The book focuses on four facets of life that can be viewed through a simplifying lens: environment, rhythm, schedules, and filtering out the adult world. Some of the questions he ends up addressing are ones I had often considered myself: How would my son behave differently if he had drastically fewer toys and less clutter in his visual space? If it has been mostly too hard to establish a rhythm of daily and weekly routines, should I keep trying and how can I do it? Why should I be wary of filling my child's days with classes and other scheduled activities? Is my son experiencing information overload? Payne ultimately discusses these ideas in much more detail, exploring the effects of screen time, advertising, choice overload, talking less while saying more, the role of unstructured time, simple ways to start increasing family connections, what kinds of toys may be helpful versus harmful, and generally how to start small and build up from there.  On that last point, he has worked with families that are so busy and overloaded with parental committments that I can scarcely imagine their struggle and has had success with many of them, so I think the success of these techniques has more to do with being motivated and open-minded than with having a lot of time to devote to an overhaul.

In the last week, I have done a lot of ruminating on simplifying, and actually made the time to take action in the "environment" arena. One morning while my son was at preschool, I bagged up half of his toys (the ones he used the least or bothered me the most) and stashed them. Many things are already flagged to be given away, and others are in a big maybe pile, but they are out of sight and out of mind. And it had an amazing and immediate effect on both my mood and on my son. He now spends more time playing with each toy and is more willing to clean up. And he doesn't seem to have noticed that many toys went missing.  I've also noticed I am spending way less time cleaning, so even in terms of time this change has already paid for itself. Really, this is an easy intervention to try out! (And it's reversible--in fact, Payne talks about creating a "lending library" from which toys can be borrowed or rotated.)

Next on my simplifying action plan is to think about shoring up our routines as a family. We've made a lot of progress on this in recent weeks, and I've seen how much easier my parenting job has gotten in the activities that involve routines. When the little guy knows that it is time to brush his teeth, and believes that is just part of what we do before bed, there are a lot fewer discussions--he is starting to become compliant without any discussion at all. (Amazing!) In addition to starting and sticking to these kinds of basic routines, I plan to follow the lead of several friends and to make an activity chart that my son can participate in. It will have a set of pictographs showing our daily activities (eat breakfast, brush teeth, wash hands, clean up toys, take a bath, etc.) that can be ordered and then moved from a "need to do" column into a "done" column. I think it will help keep both of us on track!

The last big part of my plan is more ongoing--changing the way I talk to and around my son. When a parent says too much, how can he or she listen? And how can it leave room for the child to make up his own mind? When a parent overexplains, what does a child really hear? I expect this will be difficult and require a lot of slowing down my thinking and speaking, but I can see where it would improve my relationships with everyone, and not just my son.

The only downside to this book is that I often found the descriptions of the big picture to be far too long. But perhaps this is because I was already on board with most of the concepts and didn't need written persuasion. For a parent who is feeling a bit skeptical or resistant, maybe it is necessary. Even so, there are some gems buried in that prose that seem to crystallize the take-home messages so well that I think it is worth reading the entire book and not skipping around.  I might even read the book again and write them down to create a poster of the most motivating ones.