Last summer we went back to the Navajo Reservation with our kids. One of the neat features about going is getting to see their handcrafts and buying some neat jewelry. I bought each of the kids a handmade necklace, and this turned into a homeschool science lesson as we tried to identify the rocks used in each of their necklaces.
{This post contains affiliate links marked with a *. For more information read my disclosure page}
Supplies for identifying rocks
rocks (in our case, these are polished semi-precious stones), rocks and minerals nature guide* (in our case we used the rocks and minerals playing cards* their grandparents had given them)
How we identified our rocks using nature guides
I’ll confess one reason I like using the playing cards is we can lay out all the possibilities to look over at the same time. That just isn’t possible with a book, where you have to turn pages and flip back and forth.
First observe your rocks. We noticed our rocks were a blue-green color and had some bits of brown in them.
Then we went through all of the cards in the deck and took out any cards that looked remotely like the rocks we had.
Next we looked at where the rocks were found. We could eliminate several right off because they weren’t found where our rocks were from (New Mexico).
That got us down to two choices, and we spent a lot of time debating back and forth as to which one it would end up being. But in the end we decided the blue green rocks looked like turquoise, and the brown rocks were molybdenite (even if spell check doesn’t think that’s a word, it is).
Want some more easy earth science or nature study ideas?
Then check out some of these ideas we’ve done before:
This is a really cool idea! The jewelry also looks quite nice!
It is. I was kind of surprised the boys wanted one too, but the ones they picked aren’t really “girly.”
Looks like turquoise to me – or at least an imitation of it – sometimes they make a fake turquoise from some kind of paste. I love that you identified the rocks in the jewelry – great way to engage the kids. And those cards are fantastic!
We had it narrowed down to turquoise or aquamarine, but the kids were dead certain it was aquamarine. I thought turquoise too.
I know! My in-laws gave each of the kids a set after they came back from a vacation. Princess got animal tracks, and Batman got something space related I think. Either way they’ve come in quite handy in surprising ways.
Geology is the one thing I have never done with any of my children and would love to – if not for there benefit but for mine!
I’ll admit I haven’t done much with it, beyond what was in our Earth and Space book last year.