Last week, Amelia and I decided to focus on science. We started with a crystal kit. Yes, the kit is listed as 10 years old and up, but I figured we could handle it. The boiling water was probably the reason for this, so make sure you help any kiddo under ten.
It was pretty simple. We had to boil water and measure it out. Then we added chemicals to the boiled water and stirred.
After that, we had to let it cool a bit. Then we added it to smaller cups, where the crystals would grow. The next step was to choose colors. Of course, Amelia wanted pink. So she made one pink, one white (because to make pink we had to add powder that was red and white) and I got to choose the third color. I chose red since we were already using it for the pink.
Now we just had to wait. Surprisingly, by the next morning we already had this:
And this, which is harder to see because it’s Amelia’s pink one:
Two days later, the crystal started to grow out of the cups. After some research, this is when we should have carefully dumped the chemicals out. We didn’t, so they got a little mutated:
You can see, from the first group of photos to the second, that they started to look a little bit like coral.
Eventually, we dumped out the liquid (and my fingers became a bit stained pink for a few days). But the final product was very cool, considering it was our first time growing them.
We wanted to know how and why this happens, so we watched this video:
I also wish I saw this project first. Childhood 101 has a really cool project that is similar, but uses pipe cleaners shaped like hearts. I absolutely love this project and am hoping to do this one with Amelia. I think she will love it. Here is a photo of their final project:
What did we learn from this project? Measuring. We had to carefully measure the water and the chemicals that created the color. We could have also measured the crystals as they grew, and figured out their growth rate. We also had to exercise patience, knowing that the crystal would grow slowly. Honestly, I was surprised at how quickly the crystals grew. I thought it would be days before we saw any action, but after ten hours there was already a bit of formation.
Overall, we had a last and got some really cool crystals we made ourselves. I thought the white one turned out the coolest, personally. Amelia loved her pink one. Next time we will be creating the heart-shaped ones.
Pod of One 