Borax snowflake fun

We have done this experiment before so I knew it was just the thing to get the kids thinking after the long Christmas break.

We are also learning about snow and the polar regions of the world, so it was a perfect fit.

All you need is:

a large mouthed jar,

borax,

boiling water,

food coloring (if desired),

pipe cleaners,

string,

popscicle stick.

Bring water to a boil and pour into your jar.....parents should do this step and make sure the kids are safe while stirring in the borax.

Make a super saturated solution of borax in the water.

This was the science portion on this activity.

We learning that a super saturatedsolution is refers to a solution that contains more of the dissolved material than could be dissolved by the water under normal circumstances.

This simply means you can see borax at the bottom of the jar when it has reached the supersaturation point.

After mixing the borax and water we added a little food coloring....this is very cool, since the water is so "thick" with borax.
Make a snowflake out of pipecleaners. I used 6 pieces of pipe cleaner and then twisted them together to form a snowflake. Mark made a little "guy", Gracie made a ribbon shape. Make sure the pipe cleaner can be suspended in the jar without touching the sides of the jar.
Tie one end of a piece of string to the popscicle stick and the other end to the pipe cleaner shape.

Suspend the "snowflake in the jar and wait.

The crystals form within a few hours....perfect for a wintery afternoon.

This is how our jars looked after 3 hours.

Our crystals had grown so large, Kimmy got to remove the only one that could be removed without getting stuck at the top of the jar.

Daddy came to the rescue and managed to get the others out of their jars without going outside to smash the glass.....hooray for Daddy.

Quite stuck!!

They are so cool, and very hard and durable.

We had a few old ones on our Christmas tree we made 3 years ago and they still look just as nice.

This photo doesn't do justice to the sparkle our "snowflakes" give off!!