We will ROCK YOU

One of the many intriguing things about working with young children is observing their fascination with everyday features. How many times have you seen a child stop in their tracks when playing outdoors because something as simple as a pebble, stone, or rock compels them to investigate it further? Do you always recognise the potential in such a benign object, or are you likely to tell the child to put it down again?

At some time or another, we all miss a vital learning opportunity. After all, a stone is just a stone; they’re everywhere and if the child throws it, they could injure somebody!

Personal, social, and emotional development

Through adult modelling and guidance, children can be encouraged to handle stones and pebbles with respect. They know not to throw stones and take extra care when other children or adults are present, and why.

Include stones in a treasure basket for babies, making sure they are not small enough to present a choking hazard. Pebbles in shallow bowls of water present further opportunities where the characteristics of effective learning can be observed as babies ‘play and explore’ with splashes and sounds.

Finding and sorting pebbles while feeling their texture and shape can create a sense of mindfulness where children are totally focused.

For older children, think about opportunities for using stones or pebbles to help recognise their emotions: a cool, smooth pebble for calm; a jagged, pointy rock for anger or frustration (though be careful that a stone isn’t thrown by a child struggling to manage big feelings!).

Use a marker to draw facial expressions on smooth pebbles that you can keep as a teaching resource. You can then use circle time as an opportunity for children to select an ‘emotion pebble’ from a hessian bag and name the feeling, or to find the pebble that best describes how they are feeling today.

Give children opportunities to create their own ‘emotion pebbles’ that can be taken home and shared with their family once you’ve explained how you used them.

Physical development

Opportunities to handle rocks and stones support both gross and fine motor skills. With practice, a child gradually understands how to control their hands, developing the fine motor skills that will eventually lead to being able to write.

Opportunities to manipulate objects challenge children mentally and physically, as they have to coordinate their limbs to use as levers for large heavy stones or adjust their physical effort to move a lighter pebble.

Create a place outside where children can access a good range of larger rocks and stones for creative play. Inevitably, children will want to move larger rocks from one place to another and will be encouraged to work together as they problem solve.

Communication and language

The wonderful thing about stones and pebbles is that no two are the same. Like clouds, different people will see something different in them.

When a child presents a pebble to you and suggests that it looks like a car, a bridge, or a hedgehog, they are opening a conversation that can go anywhere. Using open-ended questions – “Tell me more about your pebble hedgehog” – initiates a two-way conversation that, in turn, generates further learning opportunities led by the child – all while creating the creature with a collection of materials:

provide a wax crayon for a face to be drawn
collect small twigs to make spikes
create an environment for a pebble hedgehog to live
make up a story together
find other pebbles to make more hedgehogs or other creatures

Understanding the world

Wherever you live, there will be a stone that is unique to your area. Start by considering the stone or bricks used for houses, looking for a colour or texture that appears most often.

In cities and towns, look for older buildings such as churches as they are more likely to be made from local stone. Look for other features such as walls or bridges.

Find images of yellow Cotswold stone buildings, the chalk cliffs of Dover, or the granite buildings of Edinburgh. Consider how buildings change over time as the stone weathers and ages. Can children begin to recognise old or new buildings in their locality?

Maths

There are few mathematical concepts that cannot be explained with stones, rocks, and pebbles in place of purchasing plastic items:

Fill a container with small pebbles and ask children to guess how many are in the container. How do they each approach this task differently?
Counting: Collecting - “Find five smooth pebbles” or sing ‘Ten brown pebbles’ instead of ‘ten green bottles’.
Weights and measures: Which stone is heaviest? Put them in order from lightest to heaviest; use scales to find out how many small pebbles weigh the same as one large.
Adding and subtracting: Place five pebbles under a cloth and then remove one or two. How many are left?
Subitising: Put together small quantities of pebbles so that children can begin to recognise quantities without counting.
Number composition: Three painted red stones and three painted green stones make six; four painted red stones and two painted red stones also make six (mix and match colours, sizes, and stone types to avoid embedding misconceptions).

Creative arts and design

Pebble art: stone is a wonderful media for creativity – whether leaving the materials in their natural state to make art or decorating them to create something else, the possibilities are endless

Paint or draw faces on smooth pebbles.
Glue pebbles to make pebble pets or whatever a child wants to create.
Replace plastic counters with smooth flattened pebbles for games like snakes and ladders or noughts and crosses.
Stick smooth flat pebbles to thick paper or card for children to draw features on or around to create their own fantastic creatures!

Create your own ‘rock band’:

Small pebbles inside containers make intriguing sounds; rain sticks, castanets, and shakers with tiny stones (seal containers carefully to avoid accidents) can be enjoyed by babies and older children.
Bigger stones in plastic containers make a lovely deep clunking sound, while two stones banged together make a satisfying noise that changes according to the size and type of stone being used.

Literacy

The written word comes in many different forms that children begin to recognise early:

Look out for house names and numbers etched into slate, or memorial stones in cemeteries. Try to think together about how the names and numbers got there – “What tools or equipment might have been used?”, “What type of rock do you think is best? Why?”, and so on.
Mark areas in your garden with larger stones that have words written on them – for example: ‘Our vegetable garden’.
Use a ‘feely bag’ activity to develop language of physical description, giving children opportunities to take turns placing their hand in the bag and describe the texture, shape, and size of the rocks within. You can then write these words on the rocks or create a ‘rock garden’ with signposts containing the words. You could even write the words to match the description – for example, use zigzags to form the letters of ‘jagged’.
Make your own story stones. Paint at least 10 stones with pictures, for example, a black cat, a tree, a mouse, duck, river – or, better still, whatever the children suggest! Take turns to choose a story stone and make up your own stories together.
If you are looking for a book that involves stones, here are a couple of suggestions:

Lubna and Pebble by Wendy Meddour – This story helps children to understand about asylum seekers. Lubna finds a pebble on the beach after arriving in a strange country at night. Lubna tells Pebble about home, her brothers, and about the war they have escaped from.
A Stone Sat Still by Brendan Wenzel – Different animals come across a simple stone. Each one sees something different in it, showing how different perspectives and the passage of time can turn something ordinary into many wonderful possibilities.

We will ROCK YOU

Fun facts to share before exploration & discovery

Totally ‘rocking’ ways to build on children’s curiosity