Fun with Pretty Rocks

We went to the flea market on Sunday.  The only thing we bought were these beautiful crystals.  They were $2 for 2 scoops and I though Dot made a good choice for her one [inexpensive] item she could buy.  She was immediately intrigued by the large glass container full of these multi-colored bits.  She held the bag of them in her lap the whole ride home.

We didn't get around to playing with them until the next day but she has really enjoyed them!

Dot really liked to hear the sound they made when she poured them into this metal bowl.  We sorted them by color, talking about the different patterns, shades, shapes, textures.

We used these little plain wooden pill boxes I have all over the place to sort them and Dot's favorite part was pouring them out again into the metal bowl!

We also examined the sizes of the rocks.  We had some tiny tubes made for holding glitter which we filled with as many rocks as we could noting that some would only fit in at certain angles and some would get stuck.

We also did a little role-playing where I was the magic lizard from Alexander and the Wind-up Mouse and she had the task to find me a purple pebble.  There are only 4 or 5 amethyst stones in the whole lot so it was no easy task.  When she did find one I said, in my best magic lizard, "the moon is round, the pebble is found, what is your wish?"  And Dot said she wanted to become a lizard like me!  It was very sweet.  But now she wants me to talk lizard every time we play with these rocks...

I would really like to find a nice book with big pictures of rocks and minerals like these so we could find out what their names are and how they were made.