ROCK FESTIVALLindsay Park Elementary School

Why Rocks???A little history...

Our town - Kimberley, BC was discover over 100 years ago (1892) by prospectors searching for ore. The first discovery of ore was found on our present day ski hill - North Star Mountain – a mineral called Galena – a lead/zinc ore. The news of this discovery travelled fast which lead to the eventual finding, by four prospectors, of the Sullivan Mine ore body - once the worlds largest lead and zinc mine (from 1917-2001)

At Lindsay Park Elementary School we felt the history of our town being a Rockin’ City was important to share with our students, and to teach them

about the impact lead, zinc, and other rocks and minerals have on our lifestyles and environment.

Project DescriptionWhen you hear the word “rock”, what do you think of?

The earth is the ultimate rock. Wherever you are standing, walking, hiking or floating, there is a rock under you. At Lindsay Park Elementary School, we decided to explore the different ways that rocks are part of our world. We explored rocks through all educational mediums: Art, Math, Music, Language Arts, History, Science and Computers. Kimberley, BC is a small town nestled between the Rocky and Purcell Mountain ranges.

Learning about our home and why it is here just seemed to “fit” for our project!We celebrated all out learning with the “Lindsay Park Rock Festival”. It was a student show and share, held Tuesday January 29th from 1pm-7pm.

Highlights were Rock Collections from community members, displays from the Kimberley Public Library and wonderful rock collections from our students. Through the projects shared, we learned about Kimberley, our school, the environment and the Sullivan mine.

We learned words like “sustainable resources” and “reclamation”. We learned about rocks and precious gemstones. We learned that our first nations people used rocks for tools, art and messages in stone. We learned how old the earth is and what dinosaurs’ fossils can tell us. We learned that rocks are fun, and are a huge part of the earth we need to care for.

Individual Classroom Contributions…

•The Kindergarten classrooms created “Pet Rocks” they found rocks within our community, some which tied back to the Lead and Zinc mine that made this town boom, and some were just rocks that made them happy. We named our rocks and tested the rocks to see if they would float, if they would scratch surfaces. These rocks went on display along with a book the students created to show the community what their rocks mean to them and the environment of Kimberley. We also had a private rock collector and retired miner come into our classroom and help us discover all the things rocks are needed for to sustain a comfortable lifestyle – his Moto was “If you can’t eat it, a Rock helped make it.”•One of our classes researched the twelve monthly birth stones. They had to find what kind of rock it is, where it is found in the world, the meaning attached to the stone and an interesting or cool fact that they did not know before. We also found pictures of the 'rough' stones and the 'finished' stones.•A grade 1/2 class read the classic book Everybody Needs a Rock written by Byrd Baylor. In this story there are very specific instructions on how to find a very special rock of your own. As a class they spent some time hunting for just the right rock then learned about the type of rock we had chosen. Students each wrote about why their rock was special to them. They made a big display of our class collection to add to the individual collections that were brought in for our community "Rock Festival" complete with rocks and rock music!•The Grade 2/3 class looked at rocks through an aboriginal perspective. They learned about the beauty and meaning of Inuksuks, and their importance to the Inuit culture. Each student made their own Inuksuk and they guided the Rock Hounds through the gym during our festival.•The grade Three classroom helped restore an old rock resource which showed the location of certain types of rocks in the earth’s layers. Next they each chose a rock and researched about their chosen rock. We then created posters to show the school some basic facts (colour, classification, where it's found) and interesting facts that we found.

The students and staff at LPES would like to thank:

Brian Crowe & Kevin Redding – Rock Hounds and Teck Cominco employees

Annie Johnston – Private Collector and enthusiast

Ryan Ashby - Private Collector and enthusiastKimberley Public Library – Book display

Anna Keiver – Ab Ed WorkerAna Pakenham – for compiling rock music and

being our technical advisorMarlene Driscoll – for organizing the troops

and keeping us focused!Everyone who made this project so successful!

Rocks can guide you – as learned through the Inuit art form of

Inuksuks

Rocks are beautiful

We learned about the

importance of controlled

mining

We learned how some rocks have

special meanings and

represent different things

We learned that without rocks we wouldn’t have the tools and other objects on this table

We learned what it takes to mine rocks, and how extra measures are now being taken to make mining more

environmentally friendly

We explored the size, shape, colour, and

texture of rocks and talked about the many uses rocks have in our

day to day life

Experts and Enthusiasts joined

us at our Rock Festival to enjoy the learning our

students did with rocks

ROCKS ROCK

Rocks are what built our city, and rocks are what made our Green Games learning the success it was this year!