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Garf's Newest Rock Making Project

GEOTHERMAL AQUACULTURE RESEARCH FOUNDATION

This is a homeschooling science lesson

This is a homeschooling lesson, and we think that your children will be able to learn a bit about biology, geology and art. I think you'll enjoy this lesson; we will just get going with the visit to Mikey and the mermaids.

We've made this lesson so that you can read part of it to the family, and you can learn to make the projects from the other part. This is a fun way to teach a little bit about the ecology and making a difference by picking up garbage and taking care of your own environment. We will use aragonite gravel and sand from Caribsea company. You can get your supplies for your local fish store.

MIKIE'S BOTTLE ROCKS - Make your own

GARF's newest rock making project is inspired and described by Mikie the Manatee, and it is shared through the hearts of all who enter the Mermaid and Ocean School. This weekend Mikie has planned for all the students who attend the Mermaid and Ocean School to clean each others habitat.

The students love hunting sea shells, but trash seemed to be everywhere, especially during the summer months, when the weather starts heating up and school was out for the summer.

So many visitors come to play at the beaches, yet they tend to forget to follow some of the most important rules of the beach. Rule one is to leave no trash behind, for plastic bags left unattended fly away in the wind and catch around many of the most cherished birds, fish and corals. This often leads to their early demise.

Mix your aragaready mix with 4 parts of CaribSea™ gravel You can add water slowly to make a stiff slurry. This project works best if your mix holds its shape when place it on the gravel.

Mikie decided he was going to recruit not only the students who attend his school, but all the visitors he could plead into rolling up their sleeves and helping with the project. Who in their right mind would not want to spend the day with Mikie the Manatee, Chloe the most beautiful mermaid, Amity the growing sea turtle, and all other classmates?
Mikie told the students that they could be Conchologists if they studied sea shells.

The goal for this event is to take away some of the stress that pollution is causing in the ocean environment by picking up all trash that was left behind. It is equally important to teach all who enter our precious beaches that we all have a responsibility to protect them, guard them and keep them safe for all who want to play in this magical outdoor classroom known as our wild reefs.
home school biology

You start this project with your box half full of CaribSea gravel. You find a plastic bottle that will make your cave opening. Cut the bottle in half so you have two parts. We can make two small rocks using both ends. I often bend the bottle so the opening is not round, but this is just my personal choice.

You can include sea shells in your rock boxes. The rocks will worth more money if you use nice shells. Seashells have been used as money They are a resource it is renewable and each time the tide comes in there are more shells that wash up. They can be harvested and put to use, and it's a good way to spend your time when you're at the ocean. You can also clean up any trash that you see.

Mikie was delighted to see how many recruits volunteered to help and actually showed up to assist.
From far above it looked like ants busy at work cleaning, clearing and sprucing up the neighborhood. In no time at all piles and piles of trash were collected and bagged up so it could be disposed of properly.

GEOTHERMAL AQUACULTURE RESEARCH FOUNDATION These rocks show how you can hide the pop bottles inside of the rocks and nobody can see them. The rock will still be very lightweight.
I think that this is a great way to make rocks for a reef tank, because there is so much surface area for bacteria and organisms to live on both inside the rocking outside the rock. It's very fun to make these rocks in shapes that no one has except you. You can have the beautiful reef tank, and you don't have to take any rock from the ocean

home school art biology geology

As all the volunteers gathered the trash they could not believe their eyes, for they found fishing nets, oars, fishing line, hooks, bottles, cans, suntan lotion, glasses, diapers, food and so much more.

Mikie was saddened to see how little pride people showed when recreating in his fantastic backyard. He was surprised to see rocks turned over the wrong way. The creatures who lived under the rock are now exposed to direct sunlight and left to die such a needless death.

Put a small cup of Aragocrete mix on the sand to form the base of you first Bottle Rock™. We often make the base into an Easy Leg table. Learn to do this at You can make the base as large as you want , and you can use several bottles for each rock.
Mikie noticed the pathway of destruction as the tide was rising over the sand beaches that were full of human activity the day before. The water was picking up any left over items, and it was releasing the trash into our ocean currents. Mikie was watching the tides bring the trash back and forth, he was thinking this is such a waste. All of a sudden Mikie screamed at the top of his lungs!

All of the students came running as fast as they could to find out what could have happen to their beloved leader. Chloe the most beautiful and bright mermaid asked Mikie What happened are you OK, and why did you scream.
GEOTHERMAL AQUACULTURE RESEARCH FOUNDATION
Mikie replied with great glee. You know I just had the biggest epiphany. Have you ever heard the saying that one man's trash is another man's treasures. Look at all the treasures we just collected today. We could recycle all the cans and plastic bottles. We could even start our very first lost and found booth.

Mikie then grabbed Chloe by the arm and yelled "Oh my gosh look at all the plastic!" Mikie reminded Chloe that when they started their very first rook farm the one ingredient they had a very hard time finding was the plastic shavings.

As Chloe began to grasp this idea she replied we can make bottle rocks. Oh how the fish and Octopus will love hiding in them. Mikie went on to say we can use plastic bags so that each rock has at least one bag mixed in the cement which will make the rock stay together better and help it keep its form.

octopus reef aquarium

We can make shelves and ledges with all the different types of plastic shapes that are left behind after the visitors leave the beaches and go back to their own homes. The whole chorus of volunteers shouted we will be saving countless fish, corals, and invertebrates lifes by cleaning all the trash and using it to create new life.

Mikie was so excited the whole classroom decided to make their very first bottle rocks during their lunch break. The students brains were flowing with new ides, as the first rocks began to form. The hearts and souls of each student was beating with such joy as they all realized that working together on this project will help save the wild reefs even if it is one bottle rock at a time aragocrete home school geology

We add a layer of aragacrete mix on top of the bottle. You can make the first layer thin so you can add gravel on the sides before you add the top layer- remember that this layer of sand will make a hollow space when the rock is finished.

Mikie declared, I am so proud to be a part of this team. We are dedicated to finding new fun and successful ways to interact with our oceans. We can do this best while teaching all who will listen the do's and don'ts along the way.

As Mikie and the other volunteers created new rocks, Molly the teacher and Grandmother Manatee formed ideas on how to design recycling bins and make it fun and rewarding for the public to get involved. People will think twice before just leaving trash for others to pick up. Children will frown at their Moms and Dads, if trash is left behind. We must remember the Oceans are everyone's backyard.

All of a sudden Molly screamed with excitement! All the volunteers came running to find out what in the World Molly was screaming about. Molly shouted, I just had an epiphany. We can teach our rock making projects to all who visit our homes. This way visitors witness first hand the positive impact this project carries. We can teach them important rules to follow while visiting our oceans. This will make their visit rewarding, and make them understand that this is our home. We love sharing it with everyone, for it will take everyone to help us save this resource.

octopus reef aquarium

Now you add your next layer of gravel to top of your rock. We will put one more layer of aragacrete mix on top of the layer of gravel.

When each person makes their very first rock, they can either take it home to start their very own captive reef tank, or they can add it to our reseeding the reef rock beds projects. Today is the best time to start, for if we all work together to save this Planet we will win this battle. GEOTHERMAL AQUACULTURE RESEARCH FOUNDATION

If we choose to wait for our neighbors, our friends, or our Government it will simply be too late. It is our hope that when we pass from this World we leave only the smallest of footprints, yet leave huge hearts, brave souls, and growing brains dedicated to preserving the environment for many generations to come.

home school art biology geology

This is one of the finished bottle rocks and you can not see that there's a bottle in it. It is lightweight, and it has a nice hole all the way through it. This is one that you could make with more bottles than just one. You can also notice that it has three legs, so it is a three leg table and this keeps the sand in the reef aquarium clear of rock and not covered. This is a very pretty rock and it should sell for around $39.00 at retail and $14.00 wholesale.

I think that this is a type a rock that you could build and sell at your local store and would be fun to make and this is way to get rid of some of the bottles that are waste on the beach.

This sculpture has three different bottles in it, and we have left the neck open so that we can screw their extensions on. We make extensions by including a bottle cap in the smaller rocks. These can be screwed onto the other ones and they won't fall over in the reef tank. These are our tinker rocks and it is a product that you can make; hopefully it should be very popular.

The three rocks in this picture are Three Leg Tables with a Bottle Rock on top of them. This image shows how you can combine the types of reef sculptures in our lessons. In the back you can see there is an extension that screws onto the neck on the back bottle, and that extension is what is sticking up. The extention is where you can glue corals. we will be showing you more about extension rocks in the next slideshow.

We hope that you enjoy these lessons and that you are able to use them in your home schooling. If there any chance that you could email us and tell us about what you're doing to create lessons for you homeschooling it would help us more than anything

. Educating children is the most important thing that we can do, because they are the ones who can make the decisions later about the ecology and environment. If they love the reef, by learning that they are live animals and not rocks, it can only help the reefs. If more and more people learn to love corals they will care about helping them.

Our children's books and web pages will include many different lessons. We will help you teach about, Economics, Biology, Zoology, Botany, and Geology. There are so many things that this type of home experimental reef can teach your children. You can teach them to love learning; that's the most important thing with our technology and information age.

Children should know how to find anything that they need and it's just amazing what is available to our children that none of us could have even imagined. Now if you have a smart cell phone, you can search the entire world for something that the students will be excited to learn about..

* 1 Aragonite
Aragonite is a carbonate mineral, one of the two common, naturally occurring, crystal forms of calcium carbonate, CaCO3 (the other form being the mineral calcite). It is formed by biological and physical processes, including precipitation from marine and freshwater environments.

Aragonite's crystal lattice differs from that of calcite, resulting in a different crystal shape,

Aragonite forms naturally in almost all mollusk shells, and as the calcareous endoskeleton of warm- and cold-water corals (Scleractinia). Because the mineral deposition in mollusk shells is strongly biologically controlled, some crystal forms are distinctively different from those of inorganic aragonite. In some mollusks, the entire shell is aragonite

Aragonite is the predominant mineral in warm, shallow marine environments. Calcite on the other hand, is the dominant mineral in cool marine water environments.

* 2 sea shell
home school sea shell biology geology

A seashell or sea shell, also known simply as a shell, is a hard, protective outer layer created by an animal that lives in the sea. The shell is part of the body of the animal. Empty seashells are often found washed up on beaches by beachcombers. The shells are empty because the animal has died and the soft parts have been eaten by another animal or have rotted out.

The term seashell usually refers to the exoskeleton of an invertebrate (an animal without a backbone). Most shells that are found on beaches are the shells of marine mollusks ("molluscs" in British English), partly because many of these shells endure better than other seashells.

* 3 shell money

Seashells have been used as a medium of exchange in various places, including many Indian Ocean and Pacific Ocean islands, also in North America, Africa and the Caribbean. Shells of certain species have historically been used as currency in several parts of the world, as well as being used, in the past and present, very extensively in jewellery, and for other decorative and ceremonial purposes.

* The most common species of shells to be used as currency have been Cypraea moneta, the "money cowry", and certain tusk shells

* 4 Conchologists

When the word "seashells" is used to refer only to the shells of marine mollusks then studying seashells is part of conchology. Conchologists or serious collectors who have a scientific bias are in general careful not to disturb living populations and habitats: even though they may collect a few live animals, most responsible collectors do not often over-collect or otherwise disturb ecosystems.

*5 wholesale You may sell many of your new rocks to stores. According to the United Nations Statistics Division, "wholesale" is the resale (sale without transformation) of new and used goods to retailers,