Science nerd alert: One of the favorite adventures that the tiny person and I made a regular event this last Summer was rock hunting.
An impromptu trip to the Puntledge River and the chance discovery that some rocks could be broken open to reveal crystals, more cool rocks and even – gasp – fossils changed our view of the landscape forever… in the form of piles and piles of rocks making their way into the house.
It’s painful and, in my book, unwise to dampen a kid’s enthusiasm for anything nature-focused. Plus, I loved seeing how many times we could score rocks with crystals in the middle or other cool stuff. So, I developed a serious aversion to saying “No” when she asked me to tuck another rock into my already bulging pockets on one of our regular walks.
The piles of scientific discoveries were becoming a storage issue.
Eventually, though, in 4-year-old style spending hours cracking open rocks got old (thankfully, I think we built an entire path in the backyard out of our adventure rocks). What didn’t get old was her insatiable need for visual representation of all things cool at that very moment – fossils, bones, leaf skeletons and the remnants of sea creatures.
Seeing that coming across a major paleontological discovery on a trip to the Lazo Marsh seemed relatively unlikely – however hopeful we might be – I started looking for other ways for her to connect her art brain with her scientist brain.
That’s when we discovered fossil, leaf and bone rubbing plates from Roylco. When nature is not producing, wow, these are one serious replacement.
We’ve had so much fun making huge newsprint pictures of dinosaur digs, identifying bones and body parts from ancient animals and debating how to combine the rubbing plates to get new animals “never found before.”
Often, there was the debate over whether any fossils could possibly have ever been any color other than purple. Obviously I lost that one because how is it possible everyone didn’t know that fossils came in only one color (I mean come on, mom, what the heck is wrong with you?)
While these rubbing plates are not inexpensive (from $10 – $20 depending on your type), they are so very worth the outlay if your kid is currently digging fossils, dinosaurs, bones or anything antique and science. They are fun to use, get kids really thinking about the subject and are a great way to spark their creativity (we get a lot of explorer stories from these).
They are hard to find. So, I feel comfortable letting you know that we bought ours from Planet Kids, Courtenay location.
Planet Kids is an OBE advertiser. But, this review was not solicited by or paid for by Planet Kids.
Photos courtesy of Roylco.
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