Study of Rocks and Minerals for Kids (with FREE Cards)

** Contains affiliate links at no cost to you **

Oh here we are again, my son’s favourite topic: rocks! Last year we worked on identifying the types of rocks: igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic.  This year, I added minerals to our studies, to advance our learning about the Rock Cycle.
This years’ objectives for  Rock Cycle study:

1. Review the classification of rocks
2. Identify the characteristics of rocks
3. Identify the characteristics of minerals
4. Difference between rocks and minerals
5. Products of rocks and minerals

Materials used:

• Igneous rock collection
• Metamorphic rock collection
• Sedimentary rock collection 
• Minerals collection.    
• Digital microscope (optional) Was used to examine and take magnified digital pictures of the surface of rocks and minerals. This device can become handy in taking magnified digital pictures of tiny insects, objects, or any creatures.
• Rock and Fossil Hunter Book  A really good book that provides a table of rocks and minerals, with lots of experiments and activities.

This is how we worked on each rock.  I created learning cards for each collection, the links are at the end of this post.
  Comparing rocks and minerals
Comparing Pyrite (fools’ gold and real gold)
Colours of minerals.  Trying to draw and identify the colours of each mineral.


Rocks vs Minerals.  Combined a few igneous, metamorphic and minerals then have Mavi sort them according to:  minerals, rocks and “not sure”.  Mavi had so much fun here!
  Looking closely.  We used our digital microscope (husband provided this) to have a closer look at our rocks and to check for some crystal formations :)

Metamorphic

 Igneous

 Minerals

Get your FREE printable files from the links below:

• Igneous Rocks
• Metamorphic Rocks

You can also purchase an entire pack of rock materials (I suggest this!).  If you have a budget, it's better to get them all at once so you can pull out a prolific rock study.  Any of these two would be perfect!

• Rock and Fossil Collection
• Earth Science Collection