My middle daughter loves rocks. She’s said she wants to be a geologist for as long as I can remember

Geology Lab for Kids: 52 Projects to Explore Rocks, Gems, Geodes, Crystals, Fossils, and Other Wonders of the Earth’s Surface by Garret Romaine is an amazing book with fun projects to learn about geology!

Geology Lab for Kids is a great introduction to all things geology!

The book includes twelve units with an introduction, a section on Identifying Rocks and Minerals, and a Resource List. At the beginning of each unit, there are jokes, stories, and information about the topic. Each unit has between three and six labs to reinforce the learning topic.

About the Book

Geology Lab for Kids offers 52 simple, inexpensive, and fun experiments that explore the earth’s surface, structure, and processes. Learn about the wonders of geology: the formation of crystals and fossils, the layers of the earth’s crust, and the eruption of geysers and volcanoes. Readers will learn about how crystals form; how insects are trapped and preserved in amber; how water shapes mountains, valleys, and canyons; how a volcano forms and erupts; how a geyser uses heat beneath the earth’s surface; and more.

About the Author

Garret Romaine is an award-winning journalist and technical writer hailing from Portland, Oregon. His grandfather, Harold Banta, was an attorney in Baker, Oregon specializing in mining law, and his grandmother Floy ran a rock shop in Baker. As a boy, Garret visited many collecting areas, mines, and ghost towns in the Baker area, and was hooked for life on field work. He earned a geology degree from the University of Oregon, studying under stalwarts such as Dr. Ewart Baldwin, Dr. William Orr, and Dr. Allan Kays, and followed that up with a master’s degree in geography at the University of Washington and an MBA from Portland State.

Garret has written for multiple publications in the Portland area, and has managed technical writing teams for several technology companies. He has taught technical writing at Portland State since 1997, and serves on the board of directors for the Rice Northwest Museum of Rocks and Minerals and the North America Research Group, devoted to fossil hunting.

Garret authored a regular column entitled “Mining the Internet” for the Gold Prospectors Association of America (GPAA). He has written features, product reviews, personal interviews, field reports, and research compilations for many locales across the west. He wrote Gem Trails of Washington, updated Gem Trails of Oregon, and wrote Rockhounding Idaho. He has also written a series of rock & gem identification books, plus handbooks for rockhounds and prospectors. He has written gold panning guides for the Pacific Northwest and California, and is working on Colorado next.

Our Review

We looked through the book and found a couple fun projects to try.

Most of the ingredients are household items. Color photos illustrate the project and the geology term it represents.

Tori had her heart set on making crystal geodes and we attempted that, after trying to remember three different times to buy superglue! It’s at least a two-day project, so we’ll see if crystals form in a couple days.

We made lava cakes for dessert.

Those were a big hit!

We learned about lava flow and brittle crust.

We love the simple but information labs to learn about geology. This will be a book in our science repertoire for years to come!