A few years ago we made "geodes" using various household compounds. It was so much fun.
Here are a few sites with lots of ideas for making crystals.
http://www.thehomeschoolmom.com/teacherslounge/articles/easy_crystal_experiments.php
http://www.home-school.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=3123
http://chemistry.about.com/od/growingcrystals/ht/epsomcrystal.htm
http://chemistry.about.com/od/crystalrecipes/Crystal_Recipes.htm
We used egg shells and different solutions of : salt, epsons salt, borax, sugar, soda, and a mixture of all of them. It takes time for the water to evaporate and the crystals to form. We put food coloring in ours so we could see the crystals better. We also made rock candy...but it seems we did not get any photos of it! Must have been eaten!
If you look closely you will see crystals on the outside of the pink/red shells and the top blue/green one has sheet crystals outside the shell. The purple crystals are sheet crystals.
Aha! We've made crystals, but i never thought about making geodes like that. We like to break open the real geodes so this would be a fun activity to combine both those things. Very neat, thank you for sharing.
ReplyDeleteHave a good weekend,
tracy
My son just saw your pictures so we will be doing this soon in our homeschool! Thanks for sharing~
ReplyDeleteToni (and my son Asher)
http://thehappyhousewife.com
I am for sure going to bookmark this post ! I am always looking for fun ways to learn. And this is one ! They are so pretty to look at .
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing what you have done in your homeschool. You always have such great things happening.
Blessings and ((hugs)) my SSiC
In Him<><
-Mary
Wow. I did not know you could do that.
ReplyDeleteJenn
Well, that's cool! What a great idea. I always loved geodes, and if I'd known you can make them, I'd have done that for my little ones. Alas! They're too old to get much joy from this experiment. sigh
ReplyDeleteThat is really neat. My kids would enjoy that.
ReplyDeleteKristy
Those look fun. I like all the different colors. Geodes are so cool. My husband's a geologist, so we have a few of those around.....
ReplyDeletebethanyrae
No way about the cougar. Would that make a post?
ReplyDeleteI saw one when we lived on Colorado one year, but they wouldn't believe me, as it was back in the 80's before they were coming down from the high country and just weren't being seen in populated areas. They ended up getting this one, as it started snatching pets off porches. I tried to tell them it was there. Glad no kids were hurt. Oh well. Now they're just starting to show up in lower Michigan, and the government won't admit it yet. oh well again.
bethanyrae
Wow, this is very cool. We did a little unit on rocks & minerals this year already, but we could probably still do this over the Summer.
ReplyDeleteHi,
ReplyDeleteThat's really neat!!! We've made rock candy before, but I don't think we got a whole lot of candy! : (
Thank you very much for the comment!!
God Bless,
Amber
What a neat experiment. I think we will have to make those at our house. It looks like something the kids would love.
ReplyDeletePam