Greetings,
We
are in the busiest time of the year around our house! We got back from the
Arkansas Quartz Crystal Digging Competition almost a week ago, had a work day
for Earth Science Kits and a Committee meeting for the kits and the Federation
show that will be in Ventura next June—lots of work going into education for
that statewide event. That doesn’t even touch the
The
38th Annual Galaxy of Gems Gem and Mineral Expo
I
will get right into the show and what is available for all you Educational
Professionals at the show weekend after next. We have a ton of great “stuff” as
well as people for you to meet. Don’t
forget to bring your
First of our free teacher samples are quartz crystals
(surprise-surprise). There will be both groups and small or large “jewelry
points”, (nice terminated crystals) for you to choose from. There will be
packets of several smaller points or a single larger point and small groups.
You can have one choice from the three types. I am not sure of the numbers now,
but I am sure we can come up with 70-90 packets of each type for you. Many of
these are good enough to buy findings from our dealers to make a Christmas
present, but I hope the kids get to see them first!
Our other three FREE rock samples are: 150 pieces of gypsum, used every
day in our lives. These are pieces two small for the kits and due to the forms
it takes may look quite different than your box piece. There are 45 garnet samples, my
birthstone, very showy and often much better than what is in the kits. And last
but not least, 87 Apache Tears
with a copy of their legend. You may know these better as small drops of
obsidian that form in some lava flows.
If we should run out of these we have backup samples.
We are also going to have something new for you at this
show. We have three great Posters!
The first offering for you is a great two
poster set from the Mineral Information Institute. One is a
skateboarding boy with pointers to the different minerals that compose products
in the picture. The second is The
Wonder of Crystals-Flowers from the Earth with pictures of 20 minerals-
from man-made bismuth – Fortunite to Rhodochrosite which happens to be one of my personal
favorite minerals. The next poster is a show stopper! It is from the California
Geological Survey and it is beautiful enough for framing. The name is California’s Minerals. The
center piece is a large (18 inch tall) piece of crystallized gold (our state
mineral) and in insets around it are serpentine (the state rock), the rare Benitoite (our state gem) and a saber toothed smilodon head (our state fossil) from the La Brea tar
pits. This is a beauty and worth the
trip to the show on its own merits. This is a must for everyone’s classroom. We
could have the only county in the state whose kids know the state fossil!
For this show only, the Mineral Information Institute has
sent us packets of some of their teacher materials. I will have these for you
along with sign up sheets to get on their mailing list (has to be sent
to the school address). This organization has a lot of good quality teacher
give-away material and once you are signed up will send it to you free of
charge several times a year. They have lots of freebies on their website (I
gave it to you in the last newsletter) http://www.mii.org/ and more that is
reasonably priced. They have “deep pockets” and spend much of it on education.
Something else that is new and may not be repeated – we
have books available for you at very good prices. The first one is a soft back The
Complete Guide to Rocks and Minerals-- retail is about $25. O
There have always been two types of drawings for the
show. First an hourly drawing that’s free, you get a ticket when you come in
the door. Second a door-prize drawing that cost, $1 for larger prizes. This
year we will have a FREE door-prize drawing for kids only, There are about 20 books about dinosaurs, ghost
towns, gold, crystals etc. that will be given to the kids just for filling out
the ticket. (All tickets will be destroyed after the drawing).
We are going to have 4 guests this year. Greg Wilkerson,
lead Geologist for the U. S. Forest Service, Raj
Daniels from the Bureau of Land Management, Debbie Bereki Educational Director
from the
I will elaborate on Emma,
http://venturacountystar.com/news/2007/oct/10/mammoth-makes-last-trip-big-m-museum-gets-truck/
We are making arrangements now to get the largest known fulgarite at the show, hopefully. What the heck is a fulgarite, you may ask? A fulgarite
is formed when lightning hits the ground in a particular kind of sand and
essentially melts the sand to the lightning’s form. It is the rarest metamorphic rock! Most are a few inches in length.
This one is about 6 or 8 FEET long and may be among the largest in the world!
We will also have the normal activities we have at the
shows educational area. We will have the ever popular “Make a Fossil” activity
(plaster of
There isn’t a way for kids or teachers to come to the
show and not leave the show without the beginnings of a rock collection.
By the way, not exactly science related but “The
Nutcracker” is playing in the auditorium the weekend of the show if you have
kids or grandkids. The times are
I want to leave you with two more websites that I have
come across in my travels. The first is “Masters of Disaster” with lots of
information in lesson plan form that are defined by grade levels and a great
website for info on disasters including wildfires, earthquakes and hurricanes
and much, much more. It even has a certificate for kids and families when they
finish the lesson plans. The site is
http://www.redcross.org/disaster/masters/educatorsmodule/ed-cd-main-menu-2.html
The other is a neat gadget to make if you teach weather.
It is a cloud wheel! You print it in two pieces, cut it out and put it
together. All the kids in a class can have their own with little expense. There
is an explanation of cloud types and picture showing the clouds. It is from the
NOAA website. http://www.srh.noaa.gov/srh/jetstream/synoptic/images/cloudwheel.pdf
Hope to see
you all at Education Station at the show!