NatureGlo's eScience In-depth Rocks & Minerals Studies with Historic & Geographic Connections

Almandine in its host rock photographed by Eurico Zimbres from Brazil. A reminder of a beautiful, yet tiny garnet I once found also in its host rock in Dover Plains, NY in 1988.

I have such fond childhood memories of personal rock and mineral studies, especially after my 4^th grade teacher, Mr. Skeel did a short rock and mineral unit. After school, I can still remember going to my local neighborhood library in Tivoli, New York, and unprompted, checking out rock and mineral ID books just to get to know the minerals even better. The classroom short unit studies just weren’t enough information to satisfy my insatiable curiosity and desire to know all about them.

Broadway, Tivoli, New York where I found my first sandstone bivalve fossil.
The library I went to check out rock and mineral books as a girl was just up the street another block or two and on the right. I can see the beloved, old candy store, second building on the right. Hee, hee!

My personal studies led me into informal rockhounding that same year Mr. Skeel introduced me to the realm of rocks and minerals. On occasion, throughout my life, I have found some really great specimens while rockhounding. At 11 years old, while living in the village of Tivoli, New York, I made a spectacular find. After prowling around looking for rocks in our neighborhood kids favorite kickball rock-filled parking lot, I found a very nice palm-sized sandstone with several small seashell fossils embedded along the edge of the stone. I shall never forget my awe and amazement at having found such a treasure and kept it for many decades. While exploring a small rocky cliff along a highway, in Dover Plains NY, at age 13, I found a deep purple colored garnet in its host stone. Sadly, I have since lost both specimens, but they are locked away in the treasury called memory. Below are images that are not of my specimens when I found as a kid, but, likenesses of my original specimens.

This lovely sandstone with extinct bivalves gives scope for the imagination since it looks somewhat similar to my original piece found in Tivoli, NY in the 80's.

My greatest treasure hunt of all, thus far, was when I returned to my hometown, Ellenville, New York, at age 23 for the first time in my adulthood, to a place I call "Quartz Mountain". When I was 8 years old, my uncle Paul had brought me to this same place to look for little shimmering pieces of quartz crystals that were EVERYWHERE your eyes could fall. I can remember how amazed I felt at the ease of finding the little crystals all over that mountain as a girl. 

This is a large quartz crystal cluster from Ellenville, New York,
my hometown, photographed by Rob Lavinsky iRocks.com. My uncle Paul found a large piece like this, which he gave me.

Upon returning to Quartz Mountain at 23, I filled a decent sized leather satchel with hundreds of quartz crystals and a few nice pieces of mica and pyrite. With this loot, along with several magnifying glasses, and other rock collections, I was able to dazzle and keep many of my students entertained with hands-on rocks and mineral learning stations for many hours and years! Before I hit the road as a full time RVer in May of 2013, I had to squeeze my entire life’s possessions into a campervan. I relinquished those rock and minerals collections, including my hundreds of quartz crystals to a teenage boy in West Virginia who also had an affinity for them.

Today, I write and “collect” digital curriculum along with creating websites per subject with a web page per topic I teach. Here's the Rocks and Minerals website. The web pages include all I can find of the "best of the web" on the topic along with interesting projects and activities and videos. I've been working with adding interesting projects and activities to my Rocks & Minerals Pinterest board as well. This year we spent 1-hour per mineral learning about, diamonds, rubies, amber, pearls, a mineraloid, not technically a mineral, but one which I include in our gems study.  

When time allowed me this summer to go even deeper with each mineral, I found out some amazing historical connections, which of course, led to their geographic connections. And there is always the practical everyday uses of minerals and their importance in technology to learn about. Rock and mineral connections with other subjects can just go on and on including wonderful relationships with arts and crafts. This summer, I also began the first of a series of curriculum that now includes lapbook/notebook templates. Lately, the minerals I included lapbook/notebook templates with are silver, labradorite, and malachite. Here is a link to my rocks and mineral curriculum series (more coming soon) as well as my rocks and mineral live classes for middle/high schoolers. Younger siblings are welcome to join in the live classes as well and content is multi-age flexible.