, Maria Sangiolo:
Rocks (Weekly Unplugged Project) - Petroglyphs
It has been a week full of rocks during Spring Break at our house in Albuquerque: a trip to Petroglyph National Monument, climbing over big rocks on a mountain hike, choosing pretty tumbled rocks to buy at the Natural History Museum gift shop, collecting rocks in the courtyard.
So, although I didn’t realize that we would be so into rocks this week when I chose the Unplugged Project theme last Sunday, it has been an excellent week for a rock project.
My son was too busy with his new Legos this week to care much about projects, but my oldest daughter wanted to make her own petroglyph. The children have both recently studied petroglyphs at school and I think that Petroglyph National Monument made a big impression on them.
We found what we thought would be a suitable flat rock (note: if you try this, make sure you choose as soft a rock as possible), and used a hammer to break a piece of it off to use as a chisel. We were trying to be authentic!
My daughter drew her design on the rock with a pencil. She was trying to reproduce one that we had seen at the Monument.
She then scraped the rock with the other rock to engrave the design.
Well, this proved to be slow going (the rock was not soft enough), so she got fed up and moved on to authentic Native American method number two: the Dremel Tool! My husband supervised this step and the petroglyph was quickly completed.
In case anyone is interested, here’s another fun rock idea that we once did: cracking open a geode!
Other petroglyph resources:
+ Draw your own rock art printable
+ Hawaiian petroglyphs to print and color
+ Info about petroglyphs: Petroglyphs.us
+ Fun art project: Sandpaper Petroglyphs
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If you joined us for the Unplugged Project this week, please leave a link in Mr. Linky, as well as a comment in case Mr. Linky fails at his job. If you didn’t join in, please consider taking part next week!
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Next week’s Unplugged Project theme will be:
Books
Hope to see you then!
Tags: Activity Ideas, art, arts and crafts, arts and crafts, Book Recommendations, children's books, educational, educational books, educational/homeschool, educational/homeschool, Everything Else!, kids' books, multicultural/kids around the world, Petroglyph National Monument, petroglyphs, rock carving, rocks, science projects, Southwestern US, Southwestern US, Southwestern US, Southwestern US books, Unplugged Project, Unplugged ProjectRelated posts
Posted: March 30th, 2008 under Activity Ideas, Book Recommendations, Everything Else!, Southwestern US, Southwestern US, Unplugged Project, art, arts and crafts, children's books, educational, educational/homeschool, kids' books, multicultural/kids around the world, science projects.
Comments: 13
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Comments
Comment from Michie
Time: March 30, 2008, 8:13 pm
Somehow I put the wrong link in the first time around - sorry about that! Too eager to get in ahead of the pack I guess. LOL
Comment from Nature Mama
Time: March 30, 2008, 11:46 pm
Cool project! My son would be really interested in trying this one out but I’m not sure if I would know which rock would be a soft one to work with *grin* and we don’t own a dremel either :) I checked out your link to the Geode you had. We have little holes in the side of our rock bluff behind our house that have crystals growing in them naturally. I wonder if they originally were something like the geode and then as some of the rock crumbled off the surface of the bluff it opened it and left it exposed? Hmm, interesting. We’ll have to look into that some more to :)
Have a great week!
Comment from Arwen
Time: March 31, 2008, 2:57 am
This is the first time we’ve participated in the unplugged project, and we had a lot of fun. Thanks! Rocks turned out to be a jumping point for a whole week of fun science study.
Pingback from Unplug Your Kids: Rocks at Mind Games
Time: March 31, 2008, 4:53 am
[...] have to say, this week’s Unplug Your Kids project ROCKS! (Insert groans here.) Honestly, I’ve always loved rocks - and every time I’m outdoors, [...]
Comment from Piseco
Time: March 31, 2008, 5:13 am
What a neat idea! I can see a Dremel-carved petroglyph in *our* future! We did all kinds of simple things with rocks this week at our house.
Comment from Kim
Time: March 31, 2008, 9:01 am
hello! this is my first time joining in. Thanks for your wonderful website!
Love your rock project. I too found some rock recipes, but decided to skip doing that……but some of them do sound super yummy!
Comment from Jenny
Time: March 31, 2008, 11:54 am
What a cool idea! I know next to nothing about petroglyphs, and they look fascinating. We’ll have to plan a trip to Albuquerque I think!
Comment from Heather
Time: March 31, 2008, 1:27 pm
Very Cool projects! I am definetly going to have to try them with the boys. As for next weeks project, you made Sam’s day. When I told him what the theme was for next week he practically tackled me with excitment.
Comment from Heather & John
Time: March 31, 2008, 2:20 pm
We took the week off, not that I don’t like rocks but ours were covered in snow or mud this week (and my husband took the boys away for the weekend). I have my idea for books though (hopefully the kids will like it).
Heather
Comment from Mom and Kiddo
Time: March 31, 2008, 5:25 pm
Oooh, I love petroglyphs.
Comment from warillever
Time: March 31, 2008, 6:32 pm
I’m glad to see that you got to use the Dremel.
My kids loved it too.
We didn’t go quite so high tech this week — we cut pictures of rock out of paper ;)
Comment from Claire
Time: April 1, 2008, 4:46 am
What a great idea. I think I’ll call out to the garage and have a riffle through Craig’s tools while he’s at work. He has all kinds of things so hopefully I will find one of these :-)
Comment from MatchMomma
Time: April 2, 2008, 12:12 pm
Better late than never right? Sorry so slow joining in this week… I’ve had a cold. So I flopped a bit on the project… but I did blog what we did do… well more what we didn’t do sigh … on to next week!
;0)
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