With our Southern town covered in snow and ice from Winter Storm Izzy, we decided to take a break from our regular school day and read some icy literature. I had recently purchased How to Catch a Yeti by Adam Wallace and Andy Elkerton to add to our growing How to Catch...library and thought it was a good time to break it out.
I bought the book because we love Yetis. We loved the movie Abominable that came out in 2019 about the lovable Yeti trying to get home to his family. We had saved up to take a Disney vacation before Covid-19 turned our world upside down, and the Yeti ride at Animal Kingdom was my youngest son's his favorite. We think Yeti's are adorable. This book was a hit.
As usual, the pictures truly tell this story. While the text gives some clues about the traps used to catch the creature, you really need the pictures to see how the trap will work. The kids try all kinds of crazy things to catch the Yeti. And in the end the Yeti escapes, safe and sound to his family.
The first trap the kids tried this time was created with crystal snowflakes. My son had to ask what they were. I realized he had never created snowflakes with Borax and pipe cleaners before. Well, we were stuck inside, and I happened to have all the needed supplies, so we got busy setting up this science experiment.
I know I am not the first person to share this on the internet, nor will I be the last, but here is our experiment.
Materials:
Pipe Cleaners (we chose the traditional blue and white)
Borax
Hot water
Glass Jars
Straws (or pencils or wooden dowels)
Thread
First, I boiled some water. I carefully added hot water to the jars not quite filling them. My son added the Borax. He used 4-5 Tablespoons for each jar.* He stirred them between scoops. You will want to add enough Borax so that the solution becomes supersaturated. Borax will dissolve in the hot water. You want to add enough so that you will see a little bit that just won't dissolve because the water has already taken in all the Borax that it can.
We decided we wanted to try to color the snowflake by adding blue food coloring to one of the jars.
While the solutions were cooling, we started making our snowflakes. You will want to use the fuzzy types of pipe cleaners. My son chose to use blue pipe cleaners and I chose white. We'll dip the white snowflake into the blue solution and see wat happens. We used two pipe cleaners for each snowflake. I cut the pipe cleaners in half. Using three of the pieces, we twisted them together in the center to make a six-pointed snowflake. We cut the last piece into six small "snips". I had to help my son at this point. I twisted the tiny pieces onto the end of each of the snowflake points.
Then I carefully tied a piece of thread to the end of one of the points. The other end of the thread was tied around a drinking straw. My son slowly lowered the snowflakes into the jars of Borax solution. The drinking straws lay across the top of the jar mouth to keep the snowflakes suspended in the solution.
After a few hours we could see crystals forming on the pipe cleaners. In the morning, we had these gorgeous crystal snowflakes! the pictures don't do them justice. They really sparkle in the light.
If you would like some other activities to go along with this book. Check out my book companion and STEM activities for How To Catch a Yeti.
Have you tried to make snow inside your home? Tell me about it in the comments!
Laura
* Make sure the water is boiling and you add 4-5 Tablespoons of Borax. Our first experiment, we only used "hot" tap water and only used 2-3 Tablespoons of Borax and nothing happened. The second time it worked wonderfully.
Comments