Unit Eight A fall unit study Ages 4–7
Rocks and Minerals
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Scratch stones with a fingernail, a penny, and a nail to discover which is hardest. Choose one rock to carry all week, then end with a shared pot of stone soup.
Page two
The four books
Read aloud, more than once, in no particular order. Each one is annotated — why it is here and what to watch for. If one of the four is out at the library, four is not the point.
- Everybody Needs a Rock — Byrd Baylor
- If You Find a Rock — Peggy Christian
- Let's Go Rock Collecting — Roma Gans
- A Rock Is Lively — Dianna Hutts Aston
The books are not included and they are not for sale here. They are library books, which is the point.
Page six
The science lesson
There are three kinds of rock: igneous rock was once melted, sedimentary rock is made of pressed layers, and metamorphic rock was changed by heat and pressure. Rocks are made of minerals, and a harder mineral can scratch a softer one.
It opens with what the parent needs to know, written for someone who has not thought about it since school. Then a demonstration to do at the table, and one question afterward.
“Where was this rock before it was here?”
Ask it once. Then be quiet and let the answer come, however long it takes.
And then the rest of it.
- The poems
- “Little Things” — Julia A. Fletcher Carney, said aloud once a day until it is theirs by Friday. Then “How happy is the little Stone” — Emily Dickinson, read once on the last day and deliberately not explained.
- The activity
- Choose one pocket-sized rock after reading Byrd Baylor’s book, carry it all week, and explain on the final day why that one was chosen.
- The craft
- Paint six smooth story stones with one simple image apiece, tip them from a cloth bag, and tell a story in the order they land.
- Math
- Counting, number bonds to ten, tally marks, which pile has more, and word problems to read aloud — all of it about rocks and minerals.
- The copywork page
- “Every rock has been somewhere else.” on three-line ruling — two lines traced, the rest left blank.
- A devotion, five days
- 5 days, two minutes each at the table — a verse, a sentence, and one line to pray together. New King James Version. Psalm 18:2 · Matthew 7:24 · Luke 19:40 · 1 Samuel 7:12 · Psalm 23:5.
- Stone soup
- A six-serving pot built one ingredient at a time, with a properly cleaned stone and a story worth telling first. The child’s job and the adult’s job are written out separately, so nobody has to guess who holds the knife.
- What you will need
- Four books from the library, a handful of rocks, a fingernail, a copper coin, a steel nail, vinegar, paint, soup ingredients, and a printer.
Take the rocks and minerals unit.
One purchase for the whole unit as a print-ready PDF. No account and no login — it arrives by email, and it is yours to print as often as you like for the children in your own house.
Here it is.
All five days of Apples, yours to print. A copy is on its way to your inbox as well — check the spam folder if it isn’t there in a few minutes.
Start with Monday: cut an apple across the middle instead of down through the stem, and look for the star.