Chocolate Rock Cycle Activity

I really like to do this activity with chocolate when teaching the Rock Cycle—it's such a great hands-on summation of how each step of the process works. You can see more pictures and instructions here from last time we did it. But, since this is also a journal for our family, I'm going to post pictures and a brief summary from this time too.

(It's interesting to compare the pictures of Malachi doing this activity…six years apart!)

Start with several types of baking chips for each child. We had chocolate, peanut butter, and white chocolate chips. These are your basic rocks and minerals. Let the children "weather" some of their rocks by grating them into smaller pieces with the microplane grater and letting the pieces fall on the aluminum foil.

Next, fold the foil into a packet and squish the little pieces and big pieces all together inside. Add lots of pressure—my kids like to step on and sit on their packets to make everything stick together.

When they unwrap their foil packets, they can see that all the different rocks and minerals have been cemented together into a "sedimentary rock"!

Next, wrap your rock up in foil again and add even more heat and pressure! Flatten it with your fist as hard as you can, stomp on it, hold it for a long time between your palms, pile books on top of it—whatever you can think of.

And the sedimentary rock has become a metamorphic rock! Notice that the discrete sediments have fused into larger swirled or marbled patterns.

(Note: The Metamorphic Snickers Bar activity is fun one to go along with this topic, too.)

Finally, seal up your metamorphic rock in the foil and put it into a pan of hot or boiling water. Let it sit for a minute or two, then carefully unwrap it and swirl the rocks and minerals around with a toothpick or a fork. You can see that all the different minerals have melted and formed a much more homogenous mass (though it still contains all the same ingredients!).

This is your igneous rock! And, you could "weather" all the different rocks into pieces and start the process all over again!

Or you could just let the children eat their "igneous rocks." :)

When we were done, the children all drew illustrations of the rock cycle to demonstrate their understanding of the principles. Some of them used…leaves?

Nice genuine smile, Junie. :)