When putting together a unit study or main lesson block, the first thing I do is collect resources. For our earth science units, the resources maybe for Young elementary, middle elementary or middle school, depending on whether it’s a unit study, a meteorology main lesson block, or geology. And since we have done this unit multiple times, I have multiple posts on the different resources we’ve used each time. In a Waldorf setting, mineralogy is introduced in grade 6, and geology is introduced in high school. There is a subtle yet significant difference between the two.

In our years of sharing our homeschool journey, we’ve done our mineralogy block several times. Sometimes the content I share is ‘lesson’ heavy, and other times it’s ‘project’ or ‘activity’ heavy. When sharing the lessons, I share the main lesson book, the illustration and the narration, not the actually process of me delivering a lesson. On occasion, I share a ‘Real Time’ lesson, but what you’ll find here are main lesson book entries.

We Love our hands-on projects and activities. I truly believe that some of the best learning is hands-on learning. When my children were younger (elementary school) and especially for my boys (my daughter had less interest in our projects overall), we utilized kits, projects and activity books extensively in our education. Check out some of our projects! Sadly, many kits may no longer be available, but similar ones are sure to be.

It's time for a new unit! We save our science units for the spring, and to kick off this new unit, I have a curriculum haul to share with you from Acorn Naturalists. Acorn Naturalists is one of my favorite places to pick up curriculum for science. May 13, 2016

I'm sharing some of our most recent Mineralogy resources we are using for our homeschooling lessons while using our Live Education Waldorf Main Lesson on Mineralogy. This main lesson block is intended to last about 3-4 weeks however, our blocks always last much longer. March 27, 2024

What's a Waldorf Main Lesson? And how do you put it together? I share some tips with you on how I have traditionally put together our main lesson blocks. Before I share how I put them together, let's talk about the difference between between a unit study and a main lesson block. March 29, 2024

We are doing a unit on geology, and I thought I'd share the process of putting together this unit. First I decide what we are going to study. I use the Waldorf curriculum from Live-Education as our default curriculum, so if I'm at a loss, I can always refer back to it as inspiration. You can choose a topic you are interested in, or you can expand on something in your current curriculum and turn it into a unit. August 29, 2016

This is the tail end of the planning process. It's when I've collected all my material and sorted through it. I've decided who is reading what, and which books I'll read aloud. All that's left to do is put it in my weekly lesson plans. This does take time up front, but it's worth it in the end. August 30, 2016

New units are always filled with prospect and excitement. Collecting the material from the school room, library or elsewhere is definitely fun, but it can be overwhelming. I'm showing you the materials I'm using for our Mineralogy Main Lesson block. December 1, 2017

For one of our Geology units, I collected all our resources (and then some) and lesson planned 6 weeks of lessons and projects. Check out the photos of that unit by swiping through the pics.

Sharing some of my thoughts on the difference between geology and mineralogy. Please share your thoughts and opinions on the differences between geology and the Waldorf pedagogical approach to mineralogy.

When putting together our unit study for geology, I assembled a variety of books, kits and projects. While we loved most of the activities and kits, the books we chose weren't as successful. We read a lot. And most books were informative but not captivating. November 22, 2016

Ending a main lesson block or unit study is bittersweet. There's excitement to move on, but sometimes there's a longing to continue the unit just a bit longer. This time around, though we didn't finish all we wanted to do, we did accomplish a lot and thoroughly enjoyed the activities we did. February 5, 2018

Though we will put this in our geology main lesson book, this chalk drawing and the lesson that accompanies is not a Waldorf lesson nor does it appear in the Live-Education lesson block for Mineralogy.

Chalk drawing are quintessential in Waldorf school. If you don't have a large chalkboard like mine, don't worry! You can get even better results using the ones from Waldorf Supplies.

The Mineralogy main lesson block begins its study first with local geological landscape and formations then quickly moves into the 'whole' granite, before going to the 'parts' the minerals that make up granite. It progresses in this way rather than beginning with the rock cycle and a description of each type of rock and how its made.

This is lesson 2 of our latest Mineralogy Main Lesson Block, and while most of it is in line with the Waldorf methodology, I'm realizing some of the things I want to include, like the structure of minerals and the elements and the formation of elements and minerals, are not relevant to the lesson and are not developmental appropriate for the grade 6 student.

Did you know that mountains have roots? Much like an iceberg where you only see the tip above the water, and the majority of the iceberg is below water, so to are mountains, where just the tip is visible on the the surface of the planet, while the remainder of the mountain goes deep below the surface.

In this Mineralogy Lesson we learn about volcanoes and the tremendous amount of magma below the surface of a volcanic mountain. I am using our Lyra color pencils for this lesson. We completed the lesson over 2-3 days, reading completed on the first day, the drawing next, later we read specifics about the types of rocks and magma related to this illustration and finally we wrote narrations in our main lesson books.

For our Waldorf mineralogy main lesson block, we continue with our lessons on land formation, plate tectonics and volcanic activity. Today's lesson is about the Ring of Fire. We used chalk to cover our double page layout in blue.

For our Waldorf mineralogy main lesson block, we continue with our lessons on land formation, plate tectonics and volcanic activity. While we have done the landforms for Pangea in the past, we are approaching this lesson a bit differently. We began by tracing the continents from an atlas. You could print off the continents on printer paper and cut them out alternatively.

In this mineralogy lesson, we studied volcanoes. When magma cools below the surface of the earth, it forms gigantic granite ranges. Tectonic activity, and across geological time, these granite ranges rise the surface of the Earth and through erosion and weathering the layers that covered these granite ranges you rode overtime, exposing these gigantic granite mountains.

This lesson on 'How Mountains are Formed' is a four part lesson in which we learned about Fold Mountains, Dome Mountains, Volcanoes and Fault Block Mountains.

We continue with our main lesson block in Mineralogy with a two part lesson on the formation of iron ore veins in banded iron formations and iron oxide deposits in both sedimentary and igneous rocks.

In this Mineralogy lesson, we depart from the main lesson book by Live Education to focus on two lessons where we dive into how iron ore deposits formed in precambrian oceans.

While this lesson was not in the curriculum, I chose to add it here because of its relevance with the previous lesson on the limestone cycle. Originally I intended for this lesson to be part of the limestone cycle, but it ended up being its own lesson, though I didn't have any additional written content for it.

The limestone cycle starts in the ocean hundreds of millions of years ago when tiny creatures with calcium rich shells or bodies died and littered the ocean floor with increasing sediment. From the immense weight of the water above, the pressure compacted these layers and cemented them over time.

This lesson on sedimentary rocks explores the Grand Canyon in Arizona. This geological formation is rich in beauty and geological history giving us an insight on how this land looked hundreds of millions of years ago.

Fault lines are lines of weakness in a plate and that instability results in plates shifting which can create brilliant mountain ranges. Fault lines can cause earthquakes which cause destruction to land and structures.

The formation of coal occurred during a 60 million window during a period known as the Carboniferous period. During the Mississippian and Pennsylvanian periods of the Paleozoic Era, 299 to 359 million years ago, the planet was was warm, moist and had oxygen levels of 35%. Compared to the 21% of today, the Paleozoic Era boast oversized arthropods with dragonflies the size of birds and other insects measuring 10 feet long and weighing as much as 100 pounds.

This is the first time we followed our Live Education Waldorf curriculum for mineralogy to completion. We haven’t done this in the past, in part because I found the curriculum too challenging to wrap my head around or felt there wasn’t relatable content to present.

Here's the only real time homeschool lesson for our Mineralogy unit. We're using the Rock-O-Rama classroom kit from Nature-Watch. This kit was packed with materials! We worked on these projects on three occasions over several weeks.

We are working on our geology unit and finding inspiration for projects from Barbara Taylor's book Mountains and Volcanoes. We began by warming the wax in our hands; it was easy because the weather is warm. We rounded up a yellow ball to represent the inner core then wrapped the orange ‘outer core’ around it.

This is a super easy, super affordable and very educational activity. We were inspired by the book Mountains and Volcanoes by Barbara Taylor, but took the project one step further by gluing the layers of paper together to make it a permanent 'fold mountain'. We also did the activity using very thin modeling beeswax by Stockmar from A Child's Dream.

I'm going to show you two ways to demonstrate how the continents once belong to one supercontinent Pangaea.

Our latest Dig! Discover and Display kit is not just for excavating crystals and rocks, it's for growing crystals, too! Each kit comes with two packets of mono-ammonium phosphate. Some packets of salt are dyed with food coloring to mimic crystals found in nature; however, each crystal structure is the same, forming tetragonal crystals.

We got the inspiration for this project from the book called Mountains and Volcanoes by Barbara Taylor. However, we didn't have naturally occurring chalk to perform the demonstration properly, so we improvised and used baking powder and baking soda as an alternative.

Geology is one of my favorite sciences. We are using the book Mountains and Volcanoes by Barbara Taylor as inspiration and today we are going to make a geyser.

For our geology unit, we are using the book Mountains and Volcanoes by Barbara Taylor as inspiration for projects, activities and experiments. This simple low-cost/no-cost project was fast, thrilling, informative and easy.

I was surprised at how nice these rocks and crystals were. They are beautiful, polished and from around the world. You also get a lot of specimens! Fifteen in total. This kit was great for kids 5-13 years of age, however, the crystal growing part of this kit needs adult supervision and you can see that in a separate video.

This has been our funnest project this year. We loved it! This kit perfectly accompanies a geology or earth science unit. We picked up Break Open Real Geodes from Rainbow Resource.

For our geology unit, this lapbook is the culmination of most of our work. My 5th grader still wrote daily narrations, but no information stuck as well as what he learned and relearned to make this lapbook. Though it took far longer than I expected, it turned our far better than I hoped.

For our geology unit, we excavated igneous rocks from a ‘volcano’ excavation kit. There were six rock specimens to find from a possible 12 samples. Once my 5th grader excavated the rocks, we decided to make a display for them as a way to showcase the rocks and to keep them from getting lost.

DIY excavation kits are super easy! All you need is some Plaster of Paris, a mold and some treasures to hide. We’ve been using these store bought kits in our homeschool for several years now, and I’m thrilled to be finally making them ourselves.

I admit that I have not done too many volcano projects with my kids over the years. In part it’s because I have reservations doing a chemistry experiment as part of a geology unit. Volcanic eruptions are nothing like the reaction between an acid and base, but I do confess, they are spectacular to do and oh so much fun.

I’m sure you haven’t seen the earth quite like this before. Curious to see how our layered model of the earth turned out? This is one interactive model that’s sure to delight and educate. We wet felted a model of the earth using wool, then cut it open to fill it with the mantle and core.

Here’s a really simple geology demo on thermodynamics and magma we did for our mineralogy unit using the book Mountains and Volcanoes by Barbara Taylor. You can probably do this project with materials you have around the house.

oin us as we excavate real dinosaur bone, an aquatic lizard tooth and coprolite (dinosaur dung). This Dinosaur Dig Kit by Discover with Dr. Cool was fantastic! I highly recommend it. You get three high quality fossil specimens, two activity guides, a display case and excavation tools.

Curious how sedimentary rock is formed? This is a quick and educational project that’s easy to do and fun to excavate. You do need a few materials to do this activity.

After cracking open 15 premium geodes last year for our geology unit, we decided to try this gigantic premium geode also from Discover with Dr. Cool. To be honest, the gigantic geode was no less thrilling than the 15 small ones.

We love our hands on projects and this time we are trying out a new company and their innovative kits. Recently, Excavating Adventures reached out to me to see if I would like to try their products.

We recently got four excavation kits from Excavating Adventures and I have to say, I’m blown away at how awesome these kits are. Aside from the huge amount of specimens you get in each kit, you also get to excavate in unique materials for each kit.

The Dinosaur Excavation kit from Excavating Adventures is one of the most creative kits we used. Each month (if you are doing the monthly subscription kit), you get a different kit to excavate and explore.

Curious to see what’s inside prehistoric amber? Check out what we found in our sample! This is genuine Colombian amber millions of years old.

What happens when you add an acid like vinegar to natural chalk? We tried this demonstration back in 2016 with chalkboard chalk and were disappointed because chalkboard chalk is not made from naturally occurring chalk, and this project, based on the book Mountains and Volcanoes by Barbara Taylor, calls for natural chalk.