She was completely excited thinking that in just a few minutes, she'd have awesome semi-precious stones.
That excitement quickly faded as I read her the instructions, and it informed her that this process would take 2+ weeks to complete. Her entire world of "instant gratification" crumpled almost immediately. She started reasoning with me thinking I could magically cheat the system for her, allowing her to have the stones immediately after tumbling for an hour.
I figured this is the perfect project to teach patience.
Patience is not this child's strong suit, by any means. But if she wants those stones? She has no choice. This is a beautiful lesson.
I also explained that this process can happen in nature, however it takes thousands of years. We only have to wait a couple of weeks. That seemed to really put things in perspective.
We quickly pulled everything out of the box, examined our materials, chose our bag of rocks, and started to get the tumbling process ready.
We decided to do somewhat of a "picture diary" of the process, so that in a few weeks we can look back on where these little rocks began, versus where they are at that point.
We started the tumbling process on December 29th, and are currently in our "step 2" - however I figured I'd go ahead and do the first entry concerning this, and then update along the way.
We got everything laid out, and examined what the rocks looked like 'pre-tumble.' I showed Miss T how jagged they were, and advised her to inspect their texture, because in a few days that texture would be vastly different!
We then took a final picture of the "before," and headed off to the bathroom to add all the ingredients needed for tumbling. I handled adding the powder, especially since it's covered with warnings of inhalation risks, though I must say it acted as if as soon as I poured we'd be in some kind of mushroom cloud of deadly rock tumbling dust - yet it didn't make any kind of poof of dust at all. Not even a smell. So I'm glad to report, my lungs and I are a-ok, and the grinding powder was added successfully to the tumbling barrel.
We then added the water, and set this bad boy up on our mini kitchen counter.
We set the timer for 2 days since it stated anywhere from 2-4 for step one, and we turned it on. This thing wasn't joking when it said it needed to be placed in a location where it wouldn't bother anyone. The constant whirring on this thing is maddening.
We had 0 silence downstairs for 4 whole days. Almost to where once we were finished with Step 1, I didn't want to start Step 2. Even Miss T was glad to have some silence. They said to put it on something to help absorb the noise, and that should help, and it did, but not enough. We also covered it with Miss T's thick jacket, still to no avail.
Once Step 1 was complete, I was extremely happy to - A) turn this off, and B) check the rocks.
(The silence was ah-mazing in case you were wondering)
I did all the emptying of the barrel, and rinsing the rocks while Miss T was at school, because I figured she'd do the big no-no and dump this mess down the drain in all the excitement to see the rocks. Patience is also required to safely empty the barrel, and get everything cleaned up and prepared for the next step. By the way, there's 4 in all. *blinks in disbelief*
Once I'd managed to strain all the grinding powder, carefully rinse the rocks, carefully rinse the barrel, I went ahead and took our "Step 1 complete" pictures.
It's really neat the transformation these guys made in 3 1/2 days!
I took our "pre Step 2" picture, featuring the dust packet, for easy recollection later, but wasn't going to restart the machine without Miss T (this is her project after all).
Once Miss T arrived home, I was really excited to show her how the rocks had changed.
But first, all in good fun, I made her guess what was different. It took her a second but she realized the tumbler was off, and it wasn't so noisy down here! (beautiful, wonderful, quiet.) She then realized that meant her rocks were ready to be looked at!
She was thrilled to see how the texture had changed, and how all of them were now perfectly smooth to the touch. She once again tried convincing me that she'd be happy to stop here and use the rocks to make jewelry, but again I told her we started it, we are going to finish it. I showed her the picture on the box of the super shiny rocks, and she was encouraged to display a little patience again.
I set out to find a better spot to place the tumbler before we added any powder (so I could gauge the sound), and managed to find that putting it atop a pillow, beneath the counter, with a towel covering both sides of the cabinet doors, did the trick. (sorry no picture of the location this time! But I must say I give myself an A+ for ingenuity)
Officially there's more peace down here, and I'm okay with finishing out the next few steps of this process, knowing my sanity will remain intact.
We did check the rocks yesterday, which was 2 days into Step 2, and there is definitely another change to the rock texture. We only pulled out one rock (whichever I grabbed first) and cleaned it off with a paper towel to check to see how shiny it was. The brown 'plain' looking rock is now showing more red tones, and it's absolutely beautiful. I feel this cycle will be complete tomorrow afternoon, and we'll be ready for our next round of pictures!
2 more steps to go, and then we'll be able to put together some homemade rock jewelry!
'Till next time.
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