Mining for Jewels

This morning we had a second kind of princess breakfast: royal crown pancakes! I actually have a set of princess molds especially for pancakes, but they leaked out a little so I shaped my own. As the first side was cooking, I decorated the crowns with chocolate chips and white chocolate chips for "jewels". Mini M&M's would work really well for this! My daughter (4) really liked them, and my son (1) liked eating them!

It was another beautiful day so we spent the morning outside at Deanna Rose Children's Farmstead in Overland Park, KS. We had a great time with friends and loved the perfect 70 degree weather! This is free most days, with various activities like pony rides that cost a small fee. One activity they offer that went perfect with our jewel theme was mining! We got a pretty large bag of tiny gravel and sand to sift through in their mining trough which is really fun for any age. There were actually small (and some quite large) pieces of precious gems like quartz and emerald. They even gave us a colorful chart so we could decipher which was which!

Later at home, we looked through a large book on gems to compare them with our new mini gems. The book, Crystal & Gem by R.F. Symes, was much too mature to read with my four year old, but the photos were great! We used a small candy egg carton to sort our gems as we researched them. A regular size egg carton would work just as well. Here is a picture of Molly using the chart to determine what gem she has.