This year my 5 year has started studying Science as a subject at school. He’s been coming home full of stories so I thought we could try some simple science experiments at home. As it’s Halloween our first experiment has been to grow our own Monster salt crystals. It’s surprisingly easy so I thought I would show you how we did it.

You will need:
A saucepan
Epsom Salts
Food colouring
Empty glass jar with the label removed
Large metal washer
Wooden stirrer
Bakers twine

How to grow your own Monster salt crystals:

Tie a metal washer to a length of Bakers twine and attach the other end to a wooden stirrer. Make sure the washer hangs about 2 inches from the bottom of the jar.

Roughly measure the capacity of your jar and pour this amount of water into a saucepan. Boil the water then add about 100g of Epsom Salts (which I bought from my local independent pharmacy). Stir the mixture until the salt had dissolved, then add between 50-100g of the Epsom Salts, basically until the salt doesn’t dissolve any more. At this stage you can add a few drops of food colouring but don’t put add too many. Set aside the saucepan and leave to cool.

When it has cooled down pour into your jar. Place the wooden stirrer and washer into the mixture.

Then you can watch the crystals form as the water evaporates. We left ours on a windowsill so it was easy to see the crystals grow.

The children were pretty impressed that we grew the crystals ourselves.

We thought this was a fun craft for this time of year. Let me know if you’ve ever tried this fun experiment.