Why So Salty?

The Club 4/5 crew are up for anything that involves mixing and making. A recent experiment making bath bombs with epsom salts ignited a whole bunch of new ways to use salt for science and for art!

Here, these budding scientists created crystals with some epsom salts, food coloring, and warm water.

 This activity inspired questions from the kids about what salt can do on different surfaces. So after we completed our jars of crystals, we grabbed the epsom salt, some ice cubes, and some regular table salt to experiment with. In a tub the kids poured the salts onto the ice shapes and felt the different textures it made. Both salts reacted and melted differently, which the kids found pretty interesting!

A few days later, we tried art with salt. Using glue we traced out snowflakes then sprinkled them with epsom salt. We waited all day for them to dry before we could paint them. Since the actual activity calls for regular table salt, the epsoms reacted to the glue differently than expected and our snowflakes didn't turn out how we thought they would. We still enjoyed painting them, and are eager to try this again with table salt!