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Even rocks have a cycle. Rocks are continually circulating in the mantle just below the crust of the earth. They are sometimes thrust up into the crust due to convection currents. Imagine really thick jam slowly cooking in a big pot on a stove. The jam is thick, and when it reaches a high temperature, convection currents circulate through it. Occasionally big bubbles of steam erupt from the jam and splash onto the top of the stove. This is how rocks get thrust up onto the top of the crust from the boiling mantle below. Rocks can also reach the surface when they are spit out by volcanoes.
Once on the surface of the earth, rocks cool down. Over time, they are broken up or worn down by weather, and the fragments are carried back to the ocean by way of wind, rain, and the flow of rivers and streams. All of these small pieces of rock collect as sediment at the bottom of seas and oceans. The sediment slowly solidifies into rock and is sometimes drawn back down in to the mantle at subduction zones or reaches the surface again as sea levels change or plates collide.
Sample some of the following activities to learn more about rocks and their cycles.
Places To Go 
People
To See Things To Do Teacher
Resources Bibliography
Places To GoThe following are places to go (some real and some virtual) to find out about rocks and their cycles.
Visit famous Ayers Rock in Australia. It is a sacred place to the aboriginal people, and it is made of limestone which is a sedimentary rock.
Visit Devil's Tower in Wyoming. The tower is a big hunk of igneous rock. It was formed by magma solidifying in a vertical tube that was once the heart of a volcano.
Stroll along the beaches of Easter Island. Those big, mysterious statues are made of volcanic tuff which is an igneous rock.
Virtually visit the Grand Canyon. The layer's of the earth's crust are plainly visible there.
Visit the Great Pyramid in Egypt. It's made from limestone which is a sedimentary rock.
Climb to the top of the Washington Monument. The exterior is made of white marble which is a metamorphic rock. Marble is formed when limestone is put under extreme pressure and heat. The interior of the monument is granite which is an igneous rock.
People To SeeMeet James Hutton. He was from Scotland. He is considered to be the father of modern geology.
Get to know Sylvester the donkey. By a set of strange circumstances, he turned into a rock. (It may have been an igneous rock). Read all about his adventures in William Steig's Sylvester and the Magic Pebble which won a Caldecott Medal in 1970.
Things To DoLearn about the rocks and minerals that are in the Great Basin Desert which is in part of Utah. Utah has a lot of topaz.
A metamorphic rock is formed when a previously existing rock has been changed by great heat or great pressure. Use the recipe from this website and make metamorphic rock pancakes.
All the different rocks in the world are made up of minerals. Some rocks contain just one kind of mineral, and other rocks contain many kinds of minerals. It all depends on how the rock was formed.
Think about the differences between a rock and a mineral. Then view photos of minerals at The Mineral Gallery and The Mineral and Gemstone Kingdom and photos of rocks at Igneous Rocks.
Sediment is turned into sedimentary rock by two processes. Learn more about these processes.
Discover the geological processes and cycles necessary to make dirt. The basic ingredients of soil are decaying plants and animals (organic matter) and fragments of rock.
Testing the hardness of a mineral can help you identify what it is. Learn more about the hardness of minerals and about the Mohs scale where talc is rated as a 1 and diamond is a 10.
Teacher Resources
Bibliography- Burton, Jane. The Nature and Science of Rocks. Milwaukee, WI: Gareth Stevens Pub., 1998.
- Challoner, Jack. Rocks and Minerals. Milwaukee, WI: Gareth Stevens, 1999.
- Curtis, Neil.. Rocks and Minerals. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.
- Kittinger, Jo S. A Look at Rocks: From Coal to Kimberlite. New York : Franklin Watts, c1997.
- Morris, Neil. Rocks and Minerals. New York, N.Y.: Crabtree Pub. Co., c1998.
- Snedden, Robert. Rocks and Soils. Austin, Tex.: Raintree Steck-Vaughn, 1998.
- Staedter, Tracy. Rocks and Minerals. Pleasantville, N.Y.: Reader's Digest Children's Books, c1999.