This past week I got to spend a lot of time with 4th graders. For those of you sans small people in your life, these kids are nine or ten years old and can follow directions pretty well. This particular group can also explain the difference between sedimentary and igneous rocks; discuss the three branches of government; and have embroidered the Seal of the State of Maine for an art project.

I was invited in to teach 81 students how to make felted geodes. If you want to know more about rock geodes check out Wikipedia. We made geodes with wool. How fun was it? VERY. There were four groups of about 20 students each. I did an interactive presentation on how felt is made, the students put together there own geodes using commercial, dyed Corridale roving, then we spent about 40 minutes washing our hands.

Since my hands were wet throughout this part of the class I didn’t get any pictures. Even though I presented the class four times, I never got any pictures. I just get too busy with the kids.

After washing our hands (and geodes) in hot and cold water and a liberal squirt of Dr. Bronner’s magic soap (in peppermint, of course) for about 40 minutes, I squeezed them out and cut them almost in half (half spheres–hemispheres; another word we used during this project).

Much fun was had, we all ended up clean (with wrinkled fingers), and we learned a bit more about geology and wool.

Here’s what T2’s geode looks like:

It’s a bit smaller and softer than a tennis ball.

Here’s the recipe for making your own geode:

Materials (for each geode):

• ½ oz. wool roving
• one knee-high stocking
• hot and cold water
• soap (Dr. Bronner’s is best, but dishwashing detergent works in a pinch)

Method:
1. Lay out roving in a pleasing way. Remember that your geode will be approximately 1/3 the size of the original (fluffy) ball of roving.
2. Carefully place ball of roving into stocking.
3. Squeeze all the air out of the ball and plunge into hot water (you do NOT need to have scalding water, but it should be a bit hot for your hands when you start).
4. Add a bit of soap and, using a snowball-making motion, work the ball into a lather.
5. Dip into hot water and add soap as you work the ball. Continue for 10 minutes.
6. Take stocking off of ball and squeeze all water out of the ball.
7. Plunge ball into cold water.
8. Continue the snowball-making motion, squeezing the ball together and rubbing it with some soap for 10 minutes.
9. Squeeze all water out of ball.
10. Plunge back into warm water (you can reuse the water from above) and continue to work with a bit of soap for another 5 minutes.
11. Squeeze all water out of ball.
12. Put ball into cold water (again, you can reuse the cold water from above) and work all the soap out of it.
13. After another 5 minutes in the cold water, test for doneness. If the geode is very firm you can squeeze dry and cut; if the geode is still very mushy (more Nerf-like than tennis-ball-like), repeat the hot and cold water treatments.
14. Cut geodes with an electric knife.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 22nd, 2007 at 7:10 pm and is filed under Felting, Teaching. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.