Growing Crystals: A 4th Grade Science Experiment

Whether you are a homeschooling mother, elementary science teacher, or just an inquisitive parent, you can help your child create their own crystals.

You will need the following items for this project:

1. Microscope
2. Sugar
3. Salt
4. 2 Glasses
5. 2 Spoons
6. Hot water
7. 2 Pieces of String
8. Notebook
9. Pen or Pencil
10. 2 Extra pencils

Follow the steps below to perform this project:

1. Use a microscope to view a grain of sugar and a grain of salt. Both sugar and salt are crystals. Have your students write down in their notebooks what each, the sugar and the salt look like. Let the students know that they are going to create cyrstals that are big enough to be seen without a microscope. Remind students that crystals don't really grow since they are non-living things. They just accumulate on top of each other until they are big enough to be seen.
2. Get out one of the glasses. Make your tap water as hot as it can get without burning you. Fill your glass with the hot tap water.
3. Add a spoonful of sugar and stir until it is dissolved. Do this again and again, one spoonful at a time until you can not dissolve any more sugar in the water. You will know that the water is full of the sugar when the sugar starts laying on the bottom and won't dissolve no matter what you do. Be sure to have patients and only work with one spoonful at a time so you don't get too much sugar in the glass.
4. Take one of your extra pencils. Tie a string around the middle of it and make it long enough to hang down in to the glass. Put the pencil across the top of the glass with the string hanging down in the sugar water. Set it aside and do not disturb it.
5. Repeat this process with the salt. Fill your glass with hot tap water and dissolve one spoonful of salt at a time until the glass is full. Then place a pencil over top with the string hanging down and set aside. Make sure your students know that if anyone touches the glasses over the next few days they may ruin the experiment.
6. Have the children observe each glass each day and write their findings in their notebook.
7. Talk to your class about other substances that form crystals such as honey and ice.

*Optional Step: Keep your crystals going by adding more salt or sugar every couple of days. Don't warm up the water or disturb the crystals that are already there.