Snowflakes

Typically, I am not a very spontaneous person. I prefer to have things planned out as much as possible, in fact. However, homeschooling with 3 little ones often leaves me too tired to plan everything perfectly the night before, and has left room for me to be spontaneous. I would even say it has helped me rely on God more and not my own plans, but that's for another post...

We homeschool through an awesome charter called "Sky Mountain." Today they sent out this science experiment for fun, and I had to give it a try. We made snowflakes by forming crystals on pipecleaners!

Want to see how they turned out? Sorry... you have to wait until tomorrow like us! But, you can try them on your own. The instructions are below.

Materials
• String
• White Pipe Cleaners
• Pencil
• Borax powder (can be found in the grocery store laundry detergent section, don’t use Borax bar soap though)
• Wide-Mouth Jar (big enough for “snowflake” to hang freely)

Procedure
1. Make the snowflake shape by cutting a pipe cleaner into three equal sections, and twist them
together at the center to make the shape. You will have a 6-sided snowflake. If your edges are
uneven, use the scissors to trim any longer edges. Your “snowflake” needs to fit into your jar.
2. Tie the string to the end of one of the snowflake arms and tie the other end of the string to the
pencil. You want the length of the string long enough so that you can lay the pencil across the top of
the jar, and the snowflake hangs freely in the jar, but not too long so that it touches the bottom. Set
snowflake aside.
3. Fill the wide-mouthed jar with boiling water. (use caution)
4. Add borax one tablespoon at a time to the boiling water, stirring to dissolve after each addition. The
amount used is 3 tablespoons borax per cup of water. You want to create a saturated solution.
5. Use your ruler to measure the height of the water.
6. Hang the pipe cleaner snowflake into the jar so that the pencil rests on top of the jar and the
snowflake is completely covered with liquid and hangs freely (not touching the bottom of the jar).
7. Leave your snowflake overnight (be sure not to shake the jar or disturb it).
8. The next day, lift up your pencil to observe the beautiful crystal snowflake! Hang it in a window and
enjoy!

HAVE FUN!