Treasure of the Earth

(Open Ended Play)

Let's excavate all of these stones/rocks and use a paper to test draw them and be a real geologist!

Materials:

-5 stones

-rice

-a toy car

-a brush

-a paper

Instruction:

-bury most (if not all) part of each stone in the rice

-ask your toddler to dig using fingers/hands, brush away the rice to expose the stone and display it on the top area of the tray or anywhere he/she please

-let your toddler play freely with the rice

-once it’s done, clear the space up from rice and paper

-try to draw/write each stone onto the paper

This a very exciting play for kiddo to dig like a real geologist. We used rice as fillings in this sensory tray. Somehow we have never used it before though we always have it in our kitchen. Y loves to brush away the rice off the stone, oh well she call it “rock.” It makes me curious though, what is the difference between rock and stone?

Quoting an answer for geological sense: “A rock is an object and stone is a substance. If the question was 'is there a difference between a rock and a stone’ then size or weight could possibly be the answer.” Back to me and my daughter, we assume that they are just the same.

Y tried to brush off the rice using the silicone brush even around the stone, but off course other rice will fill in the empty space. She eventually relent and simply lifted up the stone.

She did it one by one and got surprised that the last stone was rather big in comparison with other stones. Definitely worth it to prepare variety of texture and of course size of the stones.

At first she tried to crash her tractor into the stone, but eventually she found tractor together with rice to be more interesting pair. She began to dig the rice using her bare hands and pour it to the tractor. Once the tractor is fully loaded with rice she would turn it upside down and wiggle any left over of rice from the tractor.

Next she explore new thing which was to glide the tractor forward and backward. She pushed and pull the dozer blade in the process and was extremely excited to see how the rice cleared up on the tractor’s path but then soon be filled again by other rice in a landslide since the tray is full with rice. She did it over and over again.

She then get her feet into the tray, feeling all the rice under her feet. She let her feet dance on the rice then grabbed and poured the rice on her own feet. Shower rice time!

Then she get into the tray, yes sitting on the rice. Is it even comfortable? Surely it was for her. She took her time enjoying the full rice bath experience. It was messy around the tray but it was a great fun!

After she call it a day with the rice bath, I cleared up the tray while she back into the stones. I offered her a piece of paper and asked her if she’d like to try to write on it. She call drawing as writing these days. I think it’s part of wanting to be like mummy and daddy who writing a lot more than drawing. She did “write.” I asked on purpose. Two of the stones were ancient coal. With its carbon content it should be quite like pencil. The rest has certain color as well. Only one was hard crystall so would not make any mark on the paper apart from causing torn if she push the stone hard enough.

So it was, a day as indoor geologist for Y.

#toddler #stone #rock #geologist #excavation