Your child’s first rock is the key to unlocking their curiosity about nature.
Chances are your child may have a rock collection that reflects their innate, healthy, curiosity about nature. From a very young age, toddlers may begin to collect rocks for safekeeping. This is a great way to promote getting outside and your kids in nature!
You can use their very first rock as a stepping stone into exploring the many pathways to enrich their learning about nature.
This post is all about how your child’s rock collection can be used to ignite their curiosity about nature and the outdoors.
Rock Collecting
From taking their first steps outside, you may have have noticed your child picking up rocks and giving them to you for safe keeping. Kids have a natural curiosity about the world around them. We as parents, can engage with our children to learn about the gifts nature has to offer. In return, our children can open up a familiar world we may sometimes overlook during our busy lives. By exploring with our kids in nature, we can also begin to get back in touch with our inner child.
The Importance of Encouragement
It’s always good to encourage our kids when they express an interest in something special, especially nature. By allowing our children to explore the outdoors, this infant passion can grow into learning about other parts of our planet’s biome. We can share our knowledge with them and give them a jump start to expanding vocabulary, igniting the senses, and promoting exploration. Engaging with your kids in nature will develop a strong foundation for innate curiosity for the natural world.
The Best Part
One of the best parts of rock collecting, is that it’s free! Yes I said it, it is free and anyone can partake! You don’t need any fancy tools or to make any purchases.
Ways to Encourage:
1. Describe what you see.
Is it smooth, rounded, sharp? What color is the rock? Is it big, small, a giant boulder or a tiny pebble? Does it look like a mineral or a crystal?
2. Where did they find it?
Was it near other rocks? Was it by water? What could influence the shape of the rock? A river? Or possibly rain and wind? Is this a rock from your front yard or nearby park? Or is this a rock from a special trip somewhere outdoors?
3. How do you think the rock got there?
Did it come off of a larger rock, or maybe a creek or stream brought it in?
4. How old do you think the rock is?
You can be as silly or as playful as you want!
The best part is, you don’t have to be a geologist to have fun and ask intriguing questions.
Keep it Easy
Keep rock collecting fun and easy! If your chid wishes to have a collection, you could have a special place outside your door, in your yard, or in a special place inside. We like free, low-cost encounters with nature, so let’s keep our system extremely simple. We use a cardboard box to keep our small collection inside! For bigger pieces, we have another location outside. You may even already have a small collection of rocks in the cupholder of your car! Be as simple, or as fancy as you want. You could use wooden boxes, small dishes or cups, or even baskets to display your collection. Again, we encourage this to begin as a fun, free, easy activity. We have been more than happy keeping our collection inside of a small cardboard box.
Expanding from rocks to other elements of nature
Use your child’s interest in rocks to explore other parts of nature they may notice. This could include leaves, flowers, sticks, branches, walking sticks, or anything else found in nature. Anything the natural world has to offer, we can absolutely use as tools to teach our children about nature from a very young age. Again, we like to keep things free, simple, easy, and fun; and as I mentioned above, we use a simple cardboard box.
Behold! Our fun, easy, and FREE collection!
Expanding Beyond Rocks
As you can see, our collection easily and quickly expanded beyond rocks. It contains interesting leaves, sticks, seeds, and flowers (although they will certainly dry out if you keep them). All of these items are excellent discussion points to provoke thought in any young child’s mind.
- Where are the leaves or seeds from?
- Did you find them on a tree or shrub? On the ground or directly from the plant?
What shape are the leaves?
- Are they elongated, compact, heart-shaped, flat, round (ex: pine needles), or smooth?
- Where did the brach, stick, or “walking stick” come from? Which tree do you think the stick came from? You could discuss logs, branches, tree stumps with your child here as well.
Flowers are fun, but not forever
Flowers aren’t forever, unless you preserve them of course. For the sake of simplicity, we haven’t preserved any of our flowers for our collection. This is a good way to show children that flowers will wilt in nature, and won’t last forever. This can teach kids to let go of things they find (including rocks – if you don’t want them for the collection). If you have a little one that wants a particular rock that may be too large, a very big stick, or even a flower you don’t want them to pick or touch, a good technique is to snap a photo of it with your phone. This way, you can save a photo and your child may be more willing to leave things in place.
What’s great about flowers, is that you can teach young children to admire them on the plant, leaving them intact. Sometimes, however, a flower can’t help but be picked! As long as you have permission, a bouquet or a few flowers from a garden are always fun to bring indoors. That way your child can admire their element of nature on days where you don’t spend as much time outside.
What I’ve noticed with my child, is that he will collect one flower, and also choose a bud that hasn’t opened up yet. This was another great way for him to learn about the blooming process of flowers from a very young age.
Always stay Safe and Legal
Be sure to always be safe, first and foremost. Safety is our first priority, always. We can’t talk about it enough! If you suspect potentially toxic or unsafe items while on your rocking expedition, always pump the brakes! Be sure to look out for unidentified plants (ones you may suspect as dangerous, either via toxicity or thorns), unidentified mushrooms, stinging insects, or unsafe any areas for children.
If picking up a rock or collecting flowers, always be mindful of private property, and regulations within your area. Make sure you are allowed to collect, or have permission to do so.
Finally, (although this may seem redundant or an obvious rule for you as a parent) always make sure to wash hands and emphasize the importance of keeping hands clean after the collection expedition.
Develop Further with Vocabulary and Descriptions
We encourage the use of as many words and descriptive phrases as you can think of! It’s fun to introduce new vocabulary to a young child whose beginning to learn how to speak and identify objects with sound. If you continuously use diverse descriptions, you’ll see your child quickly beginning to but together their own sentences based on their own perspective.
Here are some vocabulary suggestions for describing your collection:
Adjectives for rocks – dark, light, rough, flat, round, weathered, fractured, intact, crystalline, volcanic, sedimentary, igneous, metamorphic.
Descriptions for leaves – green, fresh, dry, dead, young, sprout, flat, broad, narrow, oval, thin, elongate, pinnate, slender, succulent, fragrant.
Verbs for flowers – wild, growing, withered, pungent, sweet, fragrant, small, delicate, pretty, gorgeous, colorful, exotic, showy.
Expand your Collecting Techniques and Tools
Taking it a step further.
Of course, as your tiny explorer grows you could expand your collecting techniques and toolkit. You could include a magnifying glass, a collection container (old Tupperware works great!), scotch tape and markers for labels to document where the rock was found and on what day you went out.
Your child is likely to be very proud of their collection, and you could upgrade your display to something fancier than a cardboard box! You could place their favorite rock on a special shelf or on a desk. There are also fancy wooden wall displays with small compartments for each rock that can be hung on walls. You can make your own or find one online. You could even glue favorite rocks to a foam board or cardboard and make labels for each of them.
Eventually, you could bring your child to a mineral store or a gem show. Tucson, Arizona has the most prestigious gem and mineral show on the planet! I would however, suggest this after the kids explore in nature on their own. You wouldn’t want your child miss out on the fun trips in nature or their own backyard when finding their own rocks.
Other Activities with Rocks
There are many activities you could do with the rocks you find in nature.
You could teach or show your kids to skip rocks across a stream or lake, paint rocks and decorate potted plants or a garden, gift them to a friend or grandparents, or bring them along for a rockhounding expedition! No matter what you choose, the possibilities are endless. It all starts with just one rock to open up the possibilities of nature with your kids.
Just remember to always have fun, be safe, and until next time, happy rock hunting!