The following post was written by editor Kara Fleck.
If you’ve had a chance to listen to the Simple Mom podcast lately, then you might know that Tsh recently invited me to record with her. We talked about everything from rock and roll to rocks. Yes, rocks.
I made a joke about it during the podcast, but the truth is that rocks are a big deal around here, especially to a certain five year old.
Collecting
My son Max loves rocks. Like his sister before him, he has become our little rock hound. We have a wooden bowl on our coffee table that holds his collection. From the playground to the library parking lot to Grandma and Grandpa’s house, rocks make their way home in his pockets and then become a part of his collection.
He has small pebbles, large smooth stones, and even some polished stones and crystals thanks to a few visits to our local lapidary and some swaps with friends. (If you live in central Indiana, do check out the Spencer Lapidary) His sisters give him interesting rocks that they find on their adventures, too.
He has even been given rocks as gifts inside of “dragon eggs” that we cracked open to find the gemstones inside. (You can make your own, but we purchased ours from this etsy shop last year)
Playing
Max plays with his rocks nearly every day. He sorts them, he arranges them, and he has his favorites. He can tell you where most of them have come from – either who gave them to him or where he found them.
Max’s rocks have been played with in a variety of ways and he seems to constantly be coming up with new ways to use them. When you add a little imagination, rocks are one of nature’s original open ended toys.
Ways Max plays with his rock collection:
- he sorts them
- he uses them as scenery in his creative play
- he scoops and pours them
- his dump truck hauls them
- as pretend food
- as pretend money
- in his sand and water table
- as furniture for his gnomes, peg people, and other “guys”
- as treasure
- as dragon eggs
- he uses them as construction material
- he skips them
- we’ve used them as a counting manipulative
Rock Hounds
We aren’t the only home with children and a rock collection. In fact, rocks have been covered on Simple Kids a few times.
- Geology Rocks!
- Geology Resources
- Cherishing the Pet Rock
- (book review) If You Find a Rock by Peggy Christian
- Nature Collections: Simple Ways to Store and Display
Do you have a rock hound in your family?
About Kara
Yes! We have two baskets of rocks we collected when we visited my parents at the seaside this summer (and we’ve added a few more from a couple of subsequent visits…). My children play with them every day. I thought they might like them when I got the idea of hauling them all home in a sand bucket, but I don’t think I thought they would like them *this* much… xo
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We recently moved to the North Carolina Mountains and my children’s rock collection grew to where I had to buy containers and the front porch railing is “decorated” with them, LOL! Even my 13dd enjoys collecting now. My two oldest have joined the Rock and Mineral Society and volunteer at the museum every month with their great-grandparents. We all can’t wait for spring where we can go gem mining again. It can truly be a family affair!
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My sons love to collect pretty rocks whenever they see them
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I had to laugh when I saw this post! I used to have a rockhound as well. She is now 18, lol! Her thing was arrowheads. She was determined that any rock that was shaped remotely like an arrowhead must be an arrowhead! She then went on to collect all types of rocks.
When she was cleaning her room out for a remodel at the age of 14, we had a good laugh. She pulled 4 large shoeboxes of rocks from under her bed! Many were just gravel (which is granite in GA). She said “Why in the world did I save all these ROCKS?”
Bernice
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Love this post! I was a big fan of rocks as a child and my son (15 months) is already following suit. I started my blog when I was single, but I often joke that if I had to pick a name now it would be “pocket full of rocks” because that describes most days around here and I think it will for some time to come : )
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Oh Rocks! That brings me back to the days when my daughter collected rocks of every type! She even collected some asphalt once, and just had to keep it, even if it wasn’t a rock.
She did outgrow her rocks, or most of them anyway, but has a few special ones on a shelf and more tucked away in a box to keep forever.
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Both of my boys love rocks & also remember the story behind each one in their collection. And my 7-year-old is a huge fan of the Rock of the Month Club over at TrailMix.net (see: http://blog.trailmix.net/index.php/2010/10/05/the-trailmix-net-rock-of-the-month-club-build-a-kids-rock-collection/).
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We do, we do!!!! And crystals, gemstones, geodes, fossils, etc! We have a little pine display cabinet to showcase our favourites.
I saw somewhere on the internet a family that takes one rock from every place that they travel to and writes the place and date on the bottom, they called them vacation rocks. Brilliant!
~ joey ~
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Rocks! My three year old always hunts down rocks but I have to admit that I haven’t been very good at encouraging her love of them. This was a great reminder to ME to encourage her. I think she’d be very happy to have a rock basket to collect for. I have a question — how do you make these “dragon eggs”? I think my three year old would get a kick out of them.
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LOL yes, I have a four year-old, and rocks everywhere. I even found one in my bag the other day, I guess she felt that I needed to ground myself or something. A wonderful treasure, it made my day.
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