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If you’re interested in rocks or if you have a rock collection at home, then you might be interested in learning about the Beaver County Rock Project! Mrs. Wendy Clibbens, a fourth-grade teacher, started her students on a soil, rocks, and landforms science project, and she decided to get her class involved in the Beaver County rock project. This project lasted for one week.

The rock project is a group of people who paint rocks and hide them, not expecting anything in return. Clibbens found a rock while she was hiking in the woods, and that was how she learned about the rocks. She brought the rock to school and showed Mrs. Shultz, another fourth-grade teacher. Shultz had also found a rock, and together, they agreed to do the project for the entire fourth grade. Now the kids get to join in the fun, too! 

“ My favorite part of painting the rocks,” stated Juda Kmieciak, fourth-grader, “was that I got to hide it in the end. I hope that when someone finds it, it makes them feel happy.”

“ I liked the creativity of it,” said Jaece Leasha, another fourth grader. 

I think it’s safe to say that all of the fourth graders enjoyed this project, don’t you? What’s not to like? It’s all about making people happy, painting rocks, and being creative. 

“I wanted to relate the weathering and rock unit to a fun community project by using a weathered rock found in Lake Erie, a local stream, and rocks that came from a hillside. Each student completed a PowerPoint that included observations and discoveries of the weathered rock.  We also worked on ELA skills such as summarization of the mission statement of Beaver County Rocks,” stated Clibbens. 

If someone at home has Facebook, you can ask them to join the Beaver County rock project group, where some people post pictures of the cool rocks they found, and maybe whoever made those rocks will see the pictures and know that they made someone happy.