Geodes!

Last month on our first visit to a rock store each of the older three children chose a small geode to crack open. Bentley chose one that had a small hole in it so he could see inside and be sure that it was hollow. Jake and Viva chose closed geodes. We had read online that you should put your geode in a sock and then smash it with a hammer. When we mentioned this approach to the lady at the rock store, she looked appalled. She said if we did that we would get shards and not larger geode pieces (ideally two halves). She suggested we use a chisel to etch a line around the geode before hitting the geode hard with a chisel and hammer.

Bentley asked a few times when we were going to crack the geodes open, but I didn't have a clear plan in mind. I looked at some YouTube videos of people cracking geodes and they did not make it look easy...or safe! Finally, on Christmas Day we had some free time and Opa was home to help find the right tools, so we went out to the garage and tried our skill at geode cracking.

We got out a chisel. We got out a very heavy hammer. Opa put on leather gloves. He held the chisel in place on the geode (on a crack if he could find one) and then the children (after putting on safety glasses!) hammered away at their geodes.

Because Viva isn't as strong as her brothers (she will argue otherwise, but her muscle mass just isn't as large), she wasn't able to control the larger hammer very well and after hitting opa's hands a few times, he switched the heavy hammer for a regular hammer and put on thicker gloves! The small hammer wasn't as effective, so she had to hammer her way around the entire geode (just like the lady at the store advised!) before it finally cracked into two beautiful halves.

Jake and Viva's geodes weren't very hollow (i.e. they had very little empty space in the middle), but they were gorgeous--stuffed with beautiful white crystals. Bentley's geode was hollow, but the inside wasn't nearly as pretty as Jake and Viva's geodes were, so he was rather disappointed and asked if we could back to the rock store for more geodes.

We did. I was surprised to find that the rock store had sold most of the geodes that looked like the ones we opened and had different looking small geodes. We picked out seven new geodes and went home and cracked them open.

This time because Opa was at work, I held the chisel while the children hammered. I even let the two littlest hammer away--I was quite anxious for my arthritic thumbs! Lincoln was a little dismayed when his geode cracked in half after he gave it a good whack. (He went first and he didn't seem to know that we were hammering on them to crack them open.) Some of the new geodes we bought had thin sides making it possible for a toddler to crack open. Score!

The children really enjoyed cracking open geodes. We will definitely do it again. Bentley would like to go geode hunting and we will if we hear of a good spot to find them.