Emeralds...

For my Rocks and Minerology block study I had to write a report on a gemstone of my choice and so I chose Emeralds.

These stones are the green variety of the mineral beryl. The name comes from the Greek word smaragdos, which was given to most green stones. Emeralds are a green stone, with a hardness of 8, a white streak, and an imperfect cleavage. They are mostly translucent or transparent.

Good emerald sources are mined in Columbia, Austria, Norway, Russia, Brazil, Wales, South Africa, and North Carolina. Columbia produces 90% of the world's emeralds. They can be found with a quartz, granite, limestone, mica schist, or pegmatite host stone.

Emeralds are very rare and valuable and were important to many cultures in history. The Egyptians considered it as a symbol of life and fertility. The Aztecs considered it the stone of renewal. In the 17th century, it was thought that if you held the gem in your mouth, you would not have epilepsy. It was also thought to assist women in labor, drive away demons, and protect the wearer’s chastity. It was said to be good for the eyesight, stop fevers, prevent pain, and stop bleeding.

Emeralds as jewelry are very beautiful. There are 4 popular cuts for this stone: the mixed cut, the synthetic cut, the emerald cut, and the cabochon cut. If the stone is too cloudy to be pretty, it is tumble-polished. As emeralds are the traditional birthstone for May, it is popular for people born in this month to have jewelry made of this stone. Emeralds are also the stone for the 20th, 35th, and 55th wedding anniversaries. The largest natural emerald is the Bahia Emerald, which is 180,000 carats and is worth 75 million dollars.

Limestone to Marble Writing Assignment

Limestone to Marble Lifecycle

One day while I was studying geology I was tired of trying to learn all those boring facts, so I went on a walk to the old neighborhood quarry. It was a marble quarry. I carefully climbed down the side and in the center there was a huge boulder. I was so tired of attempting to memorize facts that I said to myself out loud while climbing the boulder, "I wish that there was an easier way to learn about metamorphic rocks!". I was on top of the boulder when I heard a deep and grainy voice say, "I could help you with that". I was so shocked that I almost fell off the boulder, but maintained my balance just in time to catch myself. "I am going to tell you a story, if you would like to listen quietly".

"I want to tell you about my lifecycle. It began about a 1000 yrs. ago. Back then I was a simple rock living life with no worries, I’m ashamed of it, but yes I was a very lazy piece of limestone. I was watching the geese flying south for the winter when I noticed I was slowly getting hot and there was a lot of pressure pushing all around me. It was very ticklish sometimes and at other times it was annoying. I got hotter and hotter and the pressure was got more intense as time went on. Over the next several hundred years, it got to where I was no longer able to watch the geese and it was getting darker and darker. That is when I realized I was slowly being pushed down towards 'the beyond'. This is what we rocks call the middle of the earth.

The further I went the hotter it got, until one day I met a weird and lovely substance, it was the brightest stuff, a beautiful rich yellow. I felt inside a certain familiarity that I knew this substance even though I didn’t recognize it. It talked to me in a rich ringing voice and called itself Magma. Turns out Magma is the mother or creator of all rocks. Even ME! I learned a lot during those years, and I even learned to like the heat and pressure.

Then Magma told me that my stay was over and it was time to start my journey back to the surface. I was kind of happy to go, I missed seeing the stars and the birds. As I was getting ready to leave, Magma kissed me goodbye and told me not to worry. She warned that I would have to go through another long process on this journey, but one day I would return to her again. As I slowly journeyed to the surface, which took a long long time, I felt very different, like I had changed somehow. It wasn't until I got to the surface that I realized when Magma has kissed me goodbye, I had slowly transformed into marble."

After the story was over this beautiful marble boulder was silent. I sat and watched the sunset then I went home. I was really excited because now I knew the rock cycle for a metamorphic rock.

My Field Trip to Warm Springs

This past Labor Day weekend, we went to visit Me-maw, my Grandma. While we were there it so happened that the springs at Warm Springs, Ga was open to the public. It may not seem like much, but we had just finished studying hot springs, fumaroles, geysers in our Geology block. Warm Springs only opens the springs one time per year on Labor Day weekend to the public, so we signed up. Since it was only 6 years and up, Polly, Lucy, King Peter and Reepicheep couldn't come. King Peter could have come, but he wasn't studying Geology and he needed to stay home and help Me-Maw. It took us about 1 hr. to get there. We had to leave early for our 10:00 am session; Polly woke up before we left, so we ended up taking her with us. When we got there we signed in and took our pictures around the water. We swam in a pool where the warm waters from the spring were pumped in.

The pools were really close to Franklin Roosevelt's Little White House. In fact, the 32nd president actually went to and used the springs for therapy for his polio in 1921. He believed that the springs helped him recover use of his legs and muscles. He made the springs into a rehabilitating area for other people inflicted with polio.

They had painted the walls of the pool white which made the water a beautiful color blue. The reason it was blue was because of all the magnesium and minerals in it. When they finally let us swim (we only had an hour and thirty minutes session) I expected the water to be hot so I was quite surprised when the water actually felt cold! It was supposed to be '89 degrees’; I thought the thermometer was going mental when it read 80 degrees. The people explained that it was cold because the water had been in the pool for a while and had cooled down. There was an area next to where the spring waters were pumped in that you could feel the warmer temperatures. The rangers and lifeguards said that the people always cluster in those area and they were right. Since Polly couldn't swim we all had to take turns staying out of the pool. After a while I got out and watched Polly for my Mom, while she got in. She didn't like it so I went back in and it was warmer the second time.

We swam a little longer before I got out and bought a bottle to collect some of the spring waters. We plan on doing some tests during our Chemistry block later this year. I then got back into the pools and played with Aravis. While playing around in the water we felt very energetic but when we got out we felt really tired. All of us found, that after we had dried off, our skin was really really soft.

Before our session was over we decided to go through the Museum. It went through the history of the pools, how the springs were formed, when and how they were used in the therapeutic center there at Warm Springs, FDR's involvement with the pools, and how patients were treated. It was pretty interesting. After that we went home. This trip was really cool and I am glad we got to go.

Our Square Foot Garden

In an effort for to take another step towards being healthier and going green (ecologically friendly) we started our own version of Square Foot Gardens last year. This year we still continue to enjoy reaping the benefits!!

We turned this into a wonderful school project! The children were responsible for completing a sun gride for each box from Spring until Fall. They also researched 'companion plants' and plotted their gardens on paper before we planted the seeds. Even though it was real sad that gummy stem rot attacked and destroyed Aravis's pumpkin plant it was a great learning experience!

While the plants grew they had to research visitors (good and bad) and find natural methods of repelling those critters that were not welcomed. It was a lot of work but SOOOO rewarding.

ABC Sound Pouches

One of the reasons I like using Montessori with my younger children is their use of hands-on objects to get concepts across. Montessori does a great job of teaching to the five senses.

This past year to appease PC #4's strong desire to 'read' we started another fun project here at Knotty Pines Academy which involved making 'ABC sound pouches'. I wish I could take credit for coming up with this neat idea, but I can't because I gleaned it from Katherine over at Life in the Onion Dome and Jojo from A Bit of This and A Bit of That. One of my absolute favorite things about reading different blogs is being inspired by *seeing* all the creative ideas other people are doing with their children then taking those ideas and adapting them for my own family.

We just did not have the time last Fall to sew our own pouches like Jojo did (you must take a peek they are really beautiful), so instead we opted for a productive trip to Michael's Craft store to purchase all the supplies to make our own sound pouches. In the following pictures I will explain the steps we used in making our own sound pouches.

We chose white canvas bags for all the consonant letters and colored pouches for the vowels. We worked on completing one pouch per week.


While at Michael's we found some self-adhesive letters. On one side they have adhesive but on the other they are made with plain cardboard so that Lucy could paint them.

Here she is painting her two vowels 'gold' because they belong to the special vowel family. The gold will show up nicely against the colored pouches.

Then she painted all the consonants in primary colors, which showed up nicely against the white canvas bags. After the letters were dry she got to stick them on her bags.
While at Michaels Craft store we were able to find some wonderful 'things' to put in each of the bags. We found many of these items on sale in the wood projects section of the store.

We also found other objects from the older girls surplus Barbie paraphernalia, our nature center, continent drawers etc. to add to her bags on a weekly basis. These sound pouches should prove to come in very handy with her younger siblings when they get ready to learn their alphabet sounds.

Making books has become a favorite form of narration here at Knotty Pines Academy and this will be PC #4's first very own handmade book!  She also loves sign language and drawing both of which could be incorporated into making a very nice book. I also saw some felt adhesive letters that could be added for a tactile component -- hmm -- time for me to do some different alphabet picture book research at the library. Maybe we could incorporate some of those fairy themes from Serendipity and we will definitely want to add our own alphabet Saints. This could be fun block to start out our year. I'll definitely blog more if this comes to fruition.

What Is A Block Study?

Good question! Homeschoolers that are familiar with or utilize the Waldorf-inspired approach to education will know well what block studies also known as main lessons are. If you prefer the immersion approach to learning / teaching versus the spiral method then you might be intrigued by block studies or main lessons. Many people mistaken block studies for unit studies, while there are similarities between the two approaches there are quite a few differences. Unit studies typically take a topic and focus on doing every subject under that topic, while block studies take a topic and spend a block of time just learning about that topic. Block studies are also similar to thematic units in that they focus on a particular subject for a specific age group, but block studies are broader in scope.

Let's see if some of these examples might be helpful ..... if a family wanted to do a 'unit study' on the subject of geology, they would purposely incorporate all other school subjects like math, language arts, religion, history, geography, etc. and they would all center on geology. The lessons would also be layered for multiple age groups. The family doing a 'thematic unit' would only focus on one topic of geology (i.e. volcanoes or caves etc.) and it would be geared towards one grade level. The family doing a 'block study' would immerse themselves in the subject of geology covering all aspects (i.e. formation of earth, land and water forms, rocks, minerals etc) and it would be structured for only one grade. You may do art, music, handiwork, language arts under that subject but you don't do every subject with that topic, not like a unit study.