Mineralogy #3 - You Are What You Eat

The word mineral is most often paired in a phrase with two other words:  "rocks and minerals" and "vitamins and minerals." Therefore, if kids have been listening, they likely associate minerals with rocks, and perhaps with vitamins. However, there's a good chance that they don't realize a rock's minerals and the minerals partnering with vitamins are one in the same. What's more, they probably don't realize that their bodies are made of minerals as well. Here are the activities we did to learn more about all of this.

First, I assigned one of my children to do his own research and make and give a PowerPoint presentation on the minerals that are in our bodies and why we need them. He was also to create a worksheet for everyone to do during/after the presentation. This was a great introduction. 

We did a great experiment with Cereal Mineral Extraction, which was to turn an iron-fortified whole-grain cereal like Total into a liquid sludge and magnetically extract the iron particles out of it. 

Then we went on a field trip, which was a grocery mineral scavenger hunt. The kids spread out all over the grocery store and read product labels to find out what minerals were in what foods.

Fun fact:  pistachios contain copper.

We finished up by making a notebooking page called "I'm a Mineral Masterpiece" where the kids drew a picture of themselves and then wrote some facts we found like, "My body contains as much iron as six paper clips," "My body contains as much calcium as 340 sticks of chalk," etc.