Make your own snowflakes!

I really like it when science and art can come together and in this activity they do. With a few ingredients you can make your own "snowflakes" overnight.

Materials needed:

*mason jar or some kind of similar container
* 20 Mule Team Borax
*pipe cleaner
*string
*stick, pen or something similar to tie the snowflake to (I used a plastic fork)
*boiling water
*food coloring, optional

First cut your pipe cleaner into 3 equal lengths. It's okay if they are not exact because you can trim them later.

Next you will twist and shape them into a "snowflake".

My daughter's snowflake

My snowflake. I think I like her's better.

Make sure your snowflake can fit into the opening of your container. You may need to trim the ends to ensure it will fit. Then you can wrap the string around the pieces like we did or you can just tie the one end. Then wrap it around a stick or whatever you are going to use to allow the snowflake to hang in the water.

Now the ratio for the borax mixture is one cup of boiling water to 3 tablespoons of Borax. In order to cover the snowflakes in our jars we need about 2 cups of water so we used 6 tablespoons of Borax. Mix them together in the jar. Stir until dissolved. It is okay if the Borax doesn't completely dissolved. You may then add a few drops of food coloring to the water. We added 3 for our "blue".

Place your snowflake in to the jar and adjust the string so that the snowflake is completely covered in the water. Now you let the mixture sit overnight.

We made two more without the food coloring.

Snowflake in the making

And so we wait...

We did ours in the early afternoon and by bedtime the crystals were already forming. We took them out the next morning and this is what we found:

Very cool!

Princess calls her's "Spiderman's Snowflake"

The few drops of food coloring we used for Princess's snowflake did not make it a dark blue. It made a blue-ish tint to the crystals. Very pretty! 

Have fun making yours!!