"A! U! Give Me Back My Gold!!!!!"
This statement is the one thing I learned in high school chemistry and have never forgotten! I thought gold was the appropriate element to focus on this week with St. Patrick's Day right around the corner and you never know, you could catch a leprechaun that will lead you to his gold! Today I focused on map reading and learning some American history about gold.
Hunt for the Leprechaun's Gold
A little prep work goes into this one; painting rocks gold...................
And drawing a map of the area where your hunt will take place, I glittered the spots where the gold was hidden.
The girls studied the map............
Then they were on the hunt for the leprechaun's gold...............
Yea! The happy treasure hunters found all the gold!
Panning for Gold
We learned all about the American Gold Rush today and drew the different routes the 49er's could have taken to get to California.
Then we did our own panning for gold. To make the gold nuggets I made a glue, glitter and gold acrylic paint concoction; then added orange lentils and rice to the mix. I let it dry overnight and found pretty realistic looking gold nuggets in the morning!
I added the gold nuggets to potting soil, added water and the ladies were now ready to.....
Pan for Gold!!!
They continued to pan for gold all afternoon and reinacted the Gold Rush! I even heard them talking about supply and demand! Click here to visit a FANTASTIC site about the gold rush. I found the information regarding the women of that time especially fascinating. Click here to get the map outline we used to draw the different routes the 49ers could travel.
Putting it Down on Paper
The ladies found gold on their PTOE and colored it in. Then they wrote and illustrated the different things they learned on a piece of paper to put in their PTOE notebooks.
Tomorrow we will visit this site Click here to learn more about the history and geology of gold. We will make some gold jewlery and paint with gold. Visit here and here for more PTOE activities.
21 comments:
What a fascinating study of gold! Thanks for sharing. I LOVE the title of your post, btw. :)
oh how fun!! I bet your girls will not forget the AU either. :)
This is FABULOUS! What a fun, fun, fun day you all had. You are so creative. I am going to have to bookmark this so I remember it when we do some mapping and learn about panning for gold.
Love it!
Sooo much fun....now that's what learning is all about....
and funny AU is the only one I remember too...still cringing at that table here though... ;)
Do you have room in your house for 4 more? You plan the most fun activities ever! :)
That looks like so much fun! My son would LOVE that!
what a great idea of "the hunt for gold", my children would love doing that
My son loves maps but I nrver thought of a treasure map!
OH how much fun. That looks brilliant...what a fun mum you are...xx
This is so great, love it! I loved treasure hunts as a kid, can't wait to create them for my LO.
You always have the most brilliant ideas! I am considering home schooling my boys right now and if I do, your blog is definitely going to be a go-to place...heck-it is either way!
Great, creative, fun ideas!!
Okay, that's it. I'll never show my kids your blog. They'll want to do fun stuff like this, and I'll have no clue how to come up with any good ideas. *sigh* I'm such a sucker.
I'm amazed at the fun stuff you come up with!!!
We're hoping to have some fun with gold tomorrow. We did make a leprechaun trap yesterday...using gold as bate!
Please, Lisa, can I be your child? It looks like so much fun!
I LOVE the treasure map... made me excited just looking at it. We do treasure hunts for the kids birthdays... but why not do one just for fun? Or to learn about gold??
I just love this! We've been waiting for the weather to get better to do a more bigger and better version of Survivor Backyard (http://annie.paxye.com/?p=273)! We were thinking about doing it out in a nearby forest next (for a bigger zip line). I would love to incorporate your ideas for finding gold and map reading. Years ago we lived in an old heritage town where we'd help with the gold panning. It's still done in the area and we learned some cool tricks from so locals. It looks like you had so much fun!
Great ideas! I've got to stay up late one night this weekend and make a map and paint some rocks. We just did a map lesson last week so it'll be perfect timing.
Love the gold treasure hunt and the gold panning activity is just fantastic, fantastic, fantastic. You have great ideas!
What a great activity! So involved, so much learning on so many levels, brilliant! What lucky girls to have such a parent so devoted to making learning real and fun!
I just scrolled through your most recent blog posts and I'M TOTALLY ADDICTED. I love so many of your ideas, particularly the bracelets and this golden one! I'm going to have to go digging for gold in your archives! Thanks!
The AU picture was Araina's idea. I just thought it was too perfect!!!
awesome! I am so using this activity for my little boy. What a great tie in to history, chemistry and business.
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