Mimi's Summer Day Camp, Day SEVEN --- Rocks & Minerals!

We had such a busy day!! Started out the morning with boulders for breakfast....(KT always says when I tell her what we're having, "not real, right?") Ha! I told her HEB makes breakfast boulders!

After breakfast, it was time to make our first activity -- ROCK candy! We boiled 4 cups of sugar with 1-1/3 cup of water, then let it cool for a while. Meanwhile, we put some drops of food coloring in some plastic cups, and then put the semi-warm sugar syrup in and mixed it up. Then we took some wooden sticks, wet the tip and rolled it in some regular sugar, and suspended them in the syrup using a clothespin. 

Colorful rock candy syrup!

They are on the windowsill now and we will check up on them on Thursday and hopefully they will be ready by next week one day.

Next we make rock candy cupcakes and the girls iced them and decorated them. These were some candy rock jellybeans.  KT loved the white ones - they tasted like lemon.

I think they were just interested in the chocolate icing!

Time to go outside and decorate our rock collection boxes.  KT loves loves loves to paint, and Joss tries real hard.  We had a messy time, but it was fun.  

 Yes, Mom, we put on the t-shirt smocks to keep our clothes clean!

Hope we can find rocks in all these colors!

Then out on our rock hunting expedition! We walked all over the vineyard, the field, and the front of our place looking for different types of rocks. We took them back to the pavilion and washed and scrubbed them with old toothbrushes.  They are drying and will wait until Thursday for us to sort into the collection boxes after we look for rocks up at Enchanted Rock.  Maybe we'll find some pink rocks up that way!

 Collecting and washing rocks

 Joss's collection

KT's collection

We were off to the library next.  We only found a couple of rock books, so the girls picked some other books they wanted to read, too.  They had a new stuffed giraffe, and Joss l - o - v - d it! She sat on it almost the whole hour we were there!

KT is concentrating on that puzzle

Grumpy had made lunch for us by the time we got home - hot dogs! Yum!  Then it was rest time for Joss.  After rest time, we got ready to swim, because KT has dance class today and we have to be ready on time.

After swim, the girls got to practice moving sand and rocks with some miniature dump trucks and other machinery! We're gonna keep these until Thursday afternoon and do some more rock moving then. This was fun.

Thursday we'll be taking our field trip to Enchanted Rock and having a picnic lunch there.  Should be lots of fun!