Valentine's Day is always a great opportunity to do a cool craft. A lot of school-created crafts are paper-made, so I was looking for something a little different for my family to try out this year.
For Christmas, my stepson got a crystal growing kit from his grandparents that he was totally obsessed with. It gave me the idea to look into DIY crystal growing. I was shocked to realize I had everything I needed for this nifty little experiment in my home already.
A craft you don't need to buy much (or anything) for is an appealing one, so I decided to delve in. Apparently, all you need is borax and some pipe cleaners to make crystals grow in your home. You do have to be careful, though, so you may want to try this craft with older kids.
The Best Ideas for Kids has a lot of great information about growing crystals at home, and for Valentine's Day at that! The site's experiment guaranteed crystals would start forming in 24 hours, and spoiler: It delivered. It was also quick, painless, and a lot of fun.
Here's what you'll need to get your own Valentine's Day crystal growing going:
• Mason jar
• Borax
• Boiling water
• Colorful pipe cleaners
• Craft sticks
Start by making hearts with pipe cleaners. Experiment with different sizes and colors to make it extra fun! As long as you've got a jar big enough for it, you're good to go.
Next, use another pipe cleaner to attach the heart to the craft stick. You want the heart to be able to hang from the stick when it’s resting on top of the Mason jar. Your heart will hang in the solution.
Test your hearts in your jars to get an idea of how much water to boil. Once you boil the water, pour enough to submerge the heart in the jar. Also make sure there's enough room around the heart for crystals to form.
Next, add borax. Be extra careful handling the borax. It can be harmful if it is ingested, is inhaled, or gets in the eyes, so make sure your kids understand the risks. If you've got safety goggles around, we'd recommend your child wearing them. Otherwise, leave the borax to the adults.
Stir until the borax is completely dissolved. If you have any little clumps in there, make sure to break them up and keep stirring. You can also add food coloring if you’re looking to add some color to your crystals!
If your family is anything like mine, they will check the jar roughly every 10 minutes until they entirely forget it exists. After constant checks where I heard reports (read: complaints) that "nothing's happening," I looked over after about six hours and saw the beginnings of our crystals.
Fast-forward 24 hours and one of our two jars had definitive crystal formation. The larger of the two didn't have anything going on, so we dumped it out and tried again. We realized we hadn't correctly adjusted the amount of borax for the amount of water, so we righted our wrongs and waited it out another day.
The next day we found success! We were still a little short on water, but most of the red heart got crystallized. The pink heart's crystals were also still intact, and they both looked adorable.
Wondering what the science behind this is? The Best Ideas for Kids offers this explanation.
"When you mix the borax powder with hot water, the hot water molecules are moving really fast which allows more borax to dissolve into it. When the water mixture starts to cool, these water molecules slow down and then move closer together," the site notes.
"This leaves less room for the dissolved borax and it begins to separate out of the water. As the borax 'falls' out of the water mixture it bonds with other borax and will start to crystallize on the pipe cleaner heart. The borax continues to crystallize on the heart until you remove it out of the water."
