By James T Murphy
My 6-year-old kindergartener grandson, Aidan, is a genuine rockhound. When he was four and we visited a nearby "pan your own gold" mine, he chose a bag of pebbles as a souvenir. And he keeps them in a hidden place in his dresser.
Then he discovered that off our back patio one side of the yard is paved with gravel. It became a daily ritual that he would slowly and carefully scan the gravel, select a few choice specimens and then lovingly wipe them off and add them to his collection.
He learned that he could break the pebbles by dropping a larger rock on them when they were set up on cement. Enter the rock crusher. Rock dust built up on our patio steps. Now five, Aidan figured out that by crushing pebbles he could rapidly multiply his rock stash. He occasionally took a favorite example into Pre-K for show and tell.
The side yard gravel gave way to mining a dirt pile in our backyard. This enterprise developed when his cousins were visiting as well. There is a 20-foot long ridge that borders the back of a grass section of our yard. It's about a foot-and-a-half high and is covered with pinestraw groundcover. And prime for four boys under six with spoons, sticks and to front-loaders.
The three budding archeologists scrapped off a section of pinestraw and began excavating. When the cousins grew tired of digging and moved on to wiffleball, Aidan stayed put cataloging the "artifacts". The small rocks were much more impressive than the gravel and then there was the ultimate treasure-MICA!
Mica became a currency that could have bought Manhattan for a lot less than beads. Aidan would sell the silvery, shiny slices for a dime each. Larger "rocks" went for a quarter. Basically he soon tiled his bookshelf with Mica. Within a few weeks of staking his claim on the Mica mine, Aidan was a "multi-MicaAire".
By the time he entered kindergarten, Aidan was up to cracking rocks that were 4-6 inches in diameter. And he was now using a hammer and trying to shape his results. Also, he became somewhat discriminating in adding to his collection. He noticed interesting shapes and colors. And he became a fan of striation. He edited his collection, eliminating the common or misshapen examples. But the Mica exhibit stayed intact.
His "hobby" reminded me of a rock-related excursion twenty five years ago. On the mission to be a better dad I bought my two elementary school daughters a rock tumbler. Truthfully, I bought it for all three of us. There was something intriguing about the idea of finding a random stone and polishing it to a beautiful gemstone. (At least that's what I thought I could do...lol).
As I recall, the rock tumbler came with a bag of semi-precious gemstones for experimentation. With great fanfare we set the machine up on the kitchen counter, plugged it in, dumped the test stones in and switched it on. And we waited.
After about ten minutes I switched it off, removed the lid and checked...no change. Switch back on. Wait a half hour, check again. Still nothing. Better read the directions again. Oops...it suggested that the tumbler might need to run all night to have an effect. All night and it was kind of noisy. But I figured that in the morning we would barely be able to look in the tumbler because of the shine.
The next morning, bright and early, I switched the machine off and removed the lid. With great anticipation, I peered in (there was no bright light shining from within) and there was no change to the stones. Nada. They looked the same.
That was the last time that machine ran. I'm pretty sure I probably did something wrong in the process. But the disappointment of the result combined with the night of no sleep pretty much shattered my dreams of becoming an expert rockhound. It could be that Aidan is set to pick up the mantle.
Enter kindergarten math. By January his teacher had the class counting to 100 by tens. (Counting to 100 by ones was old Pre-K stuff). At the end of the month, to celebrate the 100th day of the current school year, they assigned a school wide project to represent the number 100. Everybody talked about bringing 100 pennies, or 100 toothpicks. But Aidan wanted to do something with 100 rocks.
He really got stuck on how best to display them when his wise old "Poppy" remembered a performance art project from when he lived in New York. It was the 100 pairs of shoes saga. Postcards began to show up sequentially in the mail for The New York Times art critic's desk. Each one was a picture of 100 pairs of red women's shoes in recognizable settings-Times Square, Central Park, Penn Station, etc. Then after a couple of weeks the shoes started traveling across the country-the St. Louis Arch, on Pikes Peak and then on to the Golden Gate Bridge.
So, he suggested "why not 100 rocks roaming around Aidan's neighborhood? And so the 100 Rock Project was born. Aidan's mom came up with an old Mason jar bank (plastic) and Aiden undertook the task of selecting his top 100 examples. They filled about half the jar and then a bold "100 Rocks" label finished off the display.
Next came the task of outlining the possible locations for the rocks to "visit"-the school (naturally), the park, the church, all over the house, posed with each family member, at stores and all round the yard. The goal was 100 rocks in 100 situations. They would follow Aidan through his day, to McDonald's, to the drug store, through Pet Smart where they posed with each animal. The problem transformed from figuring out how to pose 100 pictures to how to edit them back to 100.
Printing the pictures, cutting them out and pasting them on a poster board with a title put the 100 Rock project on display-along with the original jar of course. So Aidan experienced how a number like 100 can take up a small space like the jar and require only one location and a few minutes to count or can require miles of driving and days of effort depending on the subject being multiplied. As he observed when he finally pasted the last photo on his display, "a hundred is a lot".
My 6-year-old kindergartener grandson, Aidan, is a genuine rockhound. When he was four and we visited a nearby "pan your own gold" mine, he chose a bag of pebbles as a souvenir. And he keeps them in a hidden place in his dresser.
Then he discovered that off our back patio one side of the yard is paved with gravel. It became a daily ritual that he would slowly and carefully scan the gravel, select a few choice specimens and then lovingly wipe them off and add them to his collection.
He learned that he could break the pebbles by dropping a larger rock on them when they were set up on cement. Enter the rock crusher. Rock dust built up on our patio steps. Now five, Aidan figured out that by crushing pebbles he could rapidly multiply his rock stash. He occasionally took a favorite example into Pre-K for show and tell.
The side yard gravel gave way to mining a dirt pile in our backyard. This enterprise developed when his cousins were visiting as well. There is a 20-foot long ridge that borders the back of a grass section of our yard. It's about a foot-and-a-half high and is covered with pinestraw groundcover. And prime for four boys under six with spoons, sticks and to front-loaders.
The three budding archeologists scrapped off a section of pinestraw and began excavating. When the cousins grew tired of digging and moved on to wiffleball, Aidan stayed put cataloging the "artifacts". The small rocks were much more impressive than the gravel and then there was the ultimate treasure-MICA!
Mica became a currency that could have bought Manhattan for a lot less than beads. Aidan would sell the silvery, shiny slices for a dime each. Larger "rocks" went for a quarter. Basically he soon tiled his bookshelf with Mica. Within a few weeks of staking his claim on the Mica mine, Aidan was a "multi-MicaAire".
By the time he entered kindergarten, Aidan was up to cracking rocks that were 4-6 inches in diameter. And he was now using a hammer and trying to shape his results. Also, he became somewhat discriminating in adding to his collection. He noticed interesting shapes and colors. And he became a fan of striation. He edited his collection, eliminating the common or misshapen examples. But the Mica exhibit stayed intact.
His "hobby" reminded me of a rock-related excursion twenty five years ago. On the mission to be a better dad I bought my two elementary school daughters a rock tumbler. Truthfully, I bought it for all three of us. There was something intriguing about the idea of finding a random stone and polishing it to a beautiful gemstone. (At least that's what I thought I could do...lol).
As I recall, the rock tumbler came with a bag of semi-precious gemstones for experimentation. With great fanfare we set the machine up on the kitchen counter, plugged it in, dumped the test stones in and switched it on. And we waited.
After about ten minutes I switched it off, removed the lid and checked...no change. Switch back on. Wait a half hour, check again. Still nothing. Better read the directions again. Oops...it suggested that the tumbler might need to run all night to have an effect. All night and it was kind of noisy. But I figured that in the morning we would barely be able to look in the tumbler because of the shine.
The next morning, bright and early, I switched the machine off and removed the lid. With great anticipation, I peered in (there was no bright light shining from within) and there was no change to the stones. Nada. They looked the same.
That was the last time that machine ran. I'm pretty sure I probably did something wrong in the process. But the disappointment of the result combined with the night of no sleep pretty much shattered my dreams of becoming an expert rockhound. It could be that Aidan is set to pick up the mantle.
Enter kindergarten math. By January his teacher had the class counting to 100 by tens. (Counting to 100 by ones was old Pre-K stuff). At the end of the month, to celebrate the 100th day of the current school year, they assigned a school wide project to represent the number 100. Everybody talked about bringing 100 pennies, or 100 toothpicks. But Aidan wanted to do something with 100 rocks.
He really got stuck on how best to display them when his wise old "Poppy" remembered a performance art project from when he lived in New York. It was the 100 pairs of shoes saga. Postcards began to show up sequentially in the mail for The New York Times art critic's desk. Each one was a picture of 100 pairs of red women's shoes in recognizable settings-Times Square, Central Park, Penn Station, etc. Then after a couple of weeks the shoes started traveling across the country-the St. Louis Arch, on Pikes Peak and then on to the Golden Gate Bridge.
So, he suggested "why not 100 rocks roaming around Aidan's neighborhood? And so the 100 Rock Project was born. Aidan's mom came up with an old Mason jar bank (plastic) and Aiden undertook the task of selecting his top 100 examples. They filled about half the jar and then a bold "100 Rocks" label finished off the display.
Next came the task of outlining the possible locations for the rocks to "visit"-the school (naturally), the park, the church, all over the house, posed with each family member, at stores and all round the yard. The goal was 100 rocks in 100 situations. They would follow Aidan through his day, to McDonald's, to the drug store, through Pet Smart where they posed with each animal. The problem transformed from figuring out how to pose 100 pictures to how to edit them back to 100.
Printing the pictures, cutting them out and pasting them on a poster board with a title put the 100 Rock project on display-along with the original jar of course. So Aidan experienced how a number like 100 can take up a small space like the jar and require only one location and a few minutes to count or can require miles of driving and days of effort depending on the subject being multiplied. As he observed when he finally pasted the last photo on his display, "a hundred is a lot".
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