Activity: Snow Crystals
All kids are fascinated with the concept of snow. Snow is often associated with snow angels, snowmen, snowball fights, and best of all, snowdays! I remember when I was young and we would do snow dances, sing snow songs, and even wear our pajamas inside out in hopes of creating a winter wonderland. Think of how exciting it would be for a child to create his or her very own snow crystal! Our step-by-step process outlined below will show you how!
Standard 1: Objective 2
Describe the water cycle
We began by laying some microscope slides out in the evening. (Unfortunately
this experiment is weather sensitive
and is definitely a winter activity.) Be sure to leave these outside, untouched for the entire night!
In the morning the glass slides should have frost on them, much like the accumulation of frost on a car windshield.
Take your slides and hold them underneath a microscope where your personalized snow crystals can be better examined!
Snowcrystals.com is such a fun website to explore with your students. This particular site delves into the wonders of snow crystals. It even provides opportunities for you and your students to email them to the site so that they can be shared with others! The picture below is one taken of a real snow crystal that fell to the earth and was captured by Kenneth G. Libbrecht using a specially designed snowflake photomicroscope. It can be found at http://www.its.caltech.edu/~ph76a/wallpaper/a640by480.jpg
This is such an awesome experiment! I really liked the way you created your own ice crystals. This is definitely an experiment that students would enjoy doing.
ReplyDeleteThis sounds like a really fun activity. It would be really fun to allow each child to have his or her own slide that they get to personally examine and take pictures of. I thought it was really great that you found that website about snow crystals as well, that would be a really interesting site to look at in class.
ReplyDeleteThis sounds really fun. It would have been nice to see more pictures of the crystals that you actually took using the microscope - do you have more that you could share?
ReplyDeleteAlso, before you can get credit for the assignment you must include credits fro images that you have gotten off of the internet in your article - it looked like at least the snowflake one might have been - contact me via email once you have made the change.
This is such a unique idea! I like the idea but would haven liked more pictures. The students are going to love making their own snow crystals.
ReplyDelete