Learning about earth science can be a real blast when the lesson involves this Igneous Rock Collection. This activity kit includes a storage tray containing large pieces of 12 kinds of igneous rock: scoria, pumice, gabbro, tuff, rhyolite, diorite, granite, andesite, basalt, obsidian, pegmatite, and porphyry. The kit also includes a guide to the formation of igneous rocks, which are created when magma or lava cools and solidifies into rock. The guide describes the two kinds of igneous rock – intrusive, created when magma cools below the Earth’s crust, and extrusive, created when lava expelled by a volcanic eruption cools on contact with the air. This kit includes samples of intrusive rocks, such as gabbro, diorite, and granite, as well as extrusive rocks, like scoria, pumice, and obsidian. Other kinds of volcanic rock are also included, such as tuff, which is formed from compacted ash expelled during a volcanic eruption. This collection of igneous rocks is suitable for ages 8 and up, and would be a welcome addition to a lesson about volcanic eruptions, as the variety of colors and textures represented in the rocks can serve to illustrate the various ways in which igneous rocks can be formed. This kit could also be paired with two associated kits, the Metamorphic Rock Collection and the Sedimentary Rock Collection, for a hands-on geology lesson on the differences between igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic rocks.
All three of these kits are available at the OISE Library in the Curriculum Resources collection, and the Igneous Rock Collection is now on display on the coffee table in the OISE Library’s ground floor lobby. You can also discover this kit and the rest of OISE’s manipulatives in the OISE Library K-12 Manipulatives Database.
