Rock Sculptures:
How about using the natural resources at hand to explore engineering concepts? Find smooth, flat stones of various sizes. Try stacking them to make sculptures. Roll acorns and pebbles down ramps made from boards and sticks. Make nature people and creatures from sticks, leaves, acorns, pebbles, shells, or other natural materials, all of which immerse your child in science, math, and engineering.
How about using the natural resources at hand to explore engineering concepts? Find smooth, flat stones of various sizes. Try stacking them to make sculptures. Roll acorns and pebbles down ramps made from boards and sticks. Make nature people and creatures from sticks, leaves, acorns, pebbles, shells, or other natural materials, all of which immerse your child in science, math, and engineering.
Rocks tell a story:
Read Everybody Needs a Rock, by Baylor - focusing on the importance of rocks to the Indigenous People.
“Rocks are like our grandfathers, they are special to us and are treated with care and respect. While I read the story think about how important rocks are to the Indigenous people.”
Students create their own story with their rocks:
Rock People Game:
The Stone People Game:
Read Everybody Needs a Rock, by Baylor - focusing on the importance of rocks to the Indigenous People.
“Rocks are like our grandfathers, they are special to us and are treated with care and respect. While I read the story think about how important rocks are to the Indigenous people.”
Students create their own story with their rocks:
- In Indigenous cultures you can only share another person's story with their permission, gifted a story. Other stories can be publicly shared like How Turtle Flew South for the Winter.
- create an anchor chart framework with student outlining criteria for success. Using traditional pictograph symbols or creating symbols of their own, students make their own Stone People Rocks as the beginning stages of writing their own story.
Rock People Game:
The Stone People Game:
- In pairs students choose 3 pictograph rocks randomly, they each have a piece of felt to place them on.
- They sit about 5ft apart from each other. One person makes a story arrangement using the 3 rocks on the felt. In Aboriginal Culture people often sit on the ground and because the Elders have lived a long life and they are important, they don’t sit directly on the ground. The rocks sit on the felt like the grandfathers on the matts.
- When they are done arranging the story, they waves their partner over.
- The partner comes over and looks at the story trying to memorize the placement. They then take one rock at a time transferring it to their felt, repeating until all of the rock are transferred. They are trying to get them in the same order.
- Since rocks are like the grandfathers you must treat them gently. Rocks cannot clank or make a sound but should touch gently together on the mat.
- The oral story can be shared.
- For increased difficulty - add more pictograph rocks!