Crystal Inquiries

Though the cold can be very brutal this time of year, a magical thing happens that captures the imagination of the children, crystal begin to grow outside!

From icicles and beautiful shinny snowflakes, to the patterns found in frozen water.

Last year we tried out a great water color recipe that "grows" crystals, and I thought it would be a wonderful thing to do again at this time of year.  Here is one of the recorded conversations we had when talking about crystals.

Danielle:  "What do you think makes crystals?"

F.F.: "Ice and a little bit of tree wax make crystals."

Danielle:  "Are you thinking of an ice crystal or a crystal you can hold in your hand?"

F.F: "I am thinking of a wood crystal made out of wood and water that feels wet.  I take it and polish it to make you feel better.  Yeah, you can hold it when you are sick."

RH: " I have a real crystal rock."

Danielle: "How do you think that crystal was made?"

RH: "Um, with crystals."

FF: "It can grow like a special plant."

CF: "They grow in caves!"

Danielle: "How do you think they grow in there?"

CF: "They grow down and up."

Danielle: "What makes them grow down and up?"

CF: "The sparkles!"

FF: "Maybe there is magic on them."

CF: "I think there is a door in the cave, and a lever, a crystal lever and you pull it down and they come out."

Danielle: "So is there a person in the cave making the crystals?"

CF: "ugh-huh."

ZY: " My daddy has an alarm to open the door."

Danielle: "Hmm, and what do you think about crystals ZY?"

 ZY: "Well, mine look like this and that, and the crystal is made out of wood and put in orange polish and then the bears eat it,because the polar bears come and eat it, and they want to go back inside but they don't know how to go inside the door because it is frozen, so they eat it all."

Danielle: "So when you think of crystals you also think of ice?"

ZY: "Yeah and the bears eat it."

Danielle: "Hmm, you all are giving me a lot to think about."

Danielle: "Has anyone ever seen crystals in the ice?"

LP:"I've seen it, they kinda look like salt.  It's just frozen bubbles."

R.G.H: "Mommy has a crystal on her shelf.  They're shinny and they are made out of ice."

E.Bee.N: "Yeah, like Elsa's."

R.G.H: "They are made out of glass too."

Danielle: "It's interesting that LP said they are like salt because we are going to make a paint using salt and we will see if it makes crystals on your paper.  Do you believe me?"

All the kids "No!"  and then a couple yeses after.

We then set to work.

The children had a container of table salt and Epson salts.  They took a large teaspoon of  Epson and a small spoon full of table salt and mix it together in a paint tray.

After they set up their salt in their trays, they add 2 table spoons of water which they measure out with the pipettes.  Once they stirred and dissolved the salts, they added liquid water colors to their trays and began painting.

Some children continued to be interested in what makes crystals grow, so they set up a little test to see if the water would freeze outside to make crystals.  We set up two variables, one with salt because that is how they created the crystals on their paintings, the other was just colored water.

(A conversation happening as they create their experiment)

CJ: "I think the color helps make the crystals."

RH: "I wonder what colors freezes faster."

We set them out side to freeze.

When we took them inside later, a group of boys began to examine them, discovering that the salt water was "still wet!"

We then began to look at geodes and crystals that we have in the classroom, as well as look at the paintings created by their classmates the day before.

NF:"I think when the crystals are in the water they pile up on each other and make bigger crystals."

Nesting Egg Geodes

For the past three years we have made egg geodes at school, and I love this project, especially how they came out this year.  We somehow always make them a little different each year, and I think this time we had the most success growing larger crystals on the eggs, but aside from the eggs, I really adore the nest the children made for the eggs.

Look at all those pretty colors!  Some of our eggs hanging out on in the art room.

I think one of the reasons the crystals came out larger is because we used less water and smaller containers.  These pint size canning jars worked great.

Here is the link for the recipe and the egg geodes we created last year and the year before.  The alum to water proportions are different this year.  We used a pint of boiling water, one egg dye tablet, and 1/8 cup of alum.  The rest of the directions on how to grow an egg geode are the same.  Here is the link:

http://www.artandsoulpreschool.blogspot.com/search/label/egg%20projects

Whenever we begin this project we look at geode slices and marvel at their beauty.

Many of the children visit these geodes regularly because we have spent a lot of time this year growing and exploring crystals.  

 I also placed the geodes out when we went to see how the egg geodes did.  It was nice watching them examine their own crystals with the same intensity.

Such pretty Alum Crystals

In Addition to the magnifying glasses, I also have these really neat prism lenses.  This one in particular split the viewing object up into five fragments.

Prior to the excitement of seeing their crystals, we had talked about how birds are busy building their nests so that they have a home for their eggs.  I expressed to the children that they are growing their crystals on an egg, so they need to be the mamas and daddies of those eggs and build their own nest.  

To do this they needed to go outside and gather the materials they felt would make a good nest. 

So out we went into the field that is next to the school.  This is a wonderful place for finding materials, as well as letting the children run.  

 One of the things I love about this field at this time of year is that you can see

 The Rip Van Winkle Bridge and the Hudson River from it.  Many of the children cross the bridge to come to school so it must be neat to see it so close from their school.  Bald Eagles nest under it, and I have seen an Eagle soaring above the school a couple times, but no such luck today.  However we did see several Robins and Sparrows, A Bluebird, and a Pileated Woodpecker.

I was told "These sunglasses make it so I can see bird nests." We did manage to see a nest high up in a tree, it must have been the sunglasses helping us.

When we got back into the classroom we had an assortment of items to use for our nests.

We started with a play-dough base and the rest was left up to the children, I was there to run around trying to find the items they requested to add to their nests.

It was a busy, messy time, and of course we all loved it, and the results were beautiful!

We had one little one who was not at school the day before to grow a geode, so she painted this lovely little egg for her nest.

I managed to get a couple pictures of some of the nests before they went home in the sweet fairy house the children have been working on.

Later that day during the Kindergarten class I began to drain out the colored water into a strainer to see if we could salvage some of the alum crystals at the bottom of the mason jars.

We managed to get quite a lot of crystals.  So, what to do with them?  They reminded me of a shell my great grandmother had made when she was young, she had taken several little shells she found on the beach and glued them into a large shell.  We had shells, so why not glue the crystals into some of these shells.  The children loved it.

Here they are adding glue to the shells and then adding their precious crystals.

It was a nice way to end the day and to save the little bits of crystals they were so proud of.