An insightful lesson

After mining for gems at Mt. Apatite (you'll hear more about that soon) and finding some nice quartz the kids made into necklaces and headbands, we decided to try the rock tumbler the kids got for Christmas last year.

The tumbler came with gems in their rough state and instructions on how to transform them into glossy stones to make jewelry. After reading the full directions from inside the box, we realized it was going to take A MONTH to tumble the rough stones into gems.

That information was definitely NOT on the outside of the box.

The inside instructions also reminded us several times that the tumbler was replicating a process nature took hundreds of years to do. Yeah, well because 21st century kids are not known for patience that information was strategically left off the outside of the box. Obviously a good marketing plan.

But we went ahead anyway with the project. The kids washed the rocks as instructed and set them tumbling with the first of 4 packets of "grit" to smooth out the stones.

Then I turned on the tumbler and man, that thing was LOUD (another detail not mentioned).

So we moved the tumbler to the basement and marked our calendar to check on it 5 days later. That's when we had to rinse the rocks and add the next packet. The next round of grit needed 14 days and a mark on the calendar. The next round required 7 days and the final polishing round needed 5.

Then finally it was time to see the stones - 31 days later.

"What do you think girls?" I asked them after the final rinse.

"They aren't pretty colors like they are on the box," said G. skeptically.

"Yeah, they aren't as nice as our crystals from Mt. Apatite," said a disappointed L.

"They're OK, I guess," said G.

So it turns out that the collection of rocks from our various outdoor adventures are actually more impressive than the $25 rock tumbler from the toy store. Now I could have told them that but this lesson was worth so much more - on so many levels - for them.

Maybe it really was worth that $25 after all.

Even in the basement, the constant churning of rocks could still be heard upstairs. It ran continuously for 31 days.

After each round, we had to dump the contents outside (so we didn't clog our drain), rinse the rocks and add the next round of grit.

With each opening of the tumbler, we had to put vaseline on the rim to ensure a good seal to prevent leakage.

 The final polishing produced a lot of foam and started to overflow when I lifted off the top.

After 31 days, yes, most of the stones were glossy but hardly impressive to the girls.