We’ve had a LOT of snow days this year and January isn’t even over yet! This week has been better but it seems we’ve had lots of cold weather and snow. One of the things I like to do with my children are learning experiences that help us learn about the beauty of God’s Kingdom. Whenever we do science activities like this, I learn something new and become fascinated by the amazing world we live in.

This week we decided to collect some snow and see what happened when it melted.

First, I gave the kids some empty clear bottles to collect some snow in. Initially I gave the girls empty water bottles. This worked okay but would be better if they did not have ridges on them. The glass jar was great because it was smooth and had a wide mouth. We packed the snow in all the way to the top.

After we brought them inside, we set the timer for 30 minutes. I wanted the kids to check on it while it melted so they could monitor the progress, make predictions and observe any changes. While we waited, I asked the kids some prediction questions.

– When the snow melts, how far up do you think the water would go?
One child said the top of the jar while the other said it would only be a little bit at the bottom.

– What do you think the water will look like? Will it be clear? Kids said clear

– How long will it take the snow to melt? Kids said days.

After 1 hour

As the snow started to warm up, we noticed that the snow got harder in the center. It became like ice instead of like snow.

After 2 hours

After 4 hours – Melted!

I tried to get an up-close photo of the water so you could see the sediment. There were some dark brown/black floaters and many tiny white specs in it.

Give the jar a quick shake. You will see lots of sediment floating. You might not notice it until it swirls around in the jar.

I was very surprised at the end because the melted snow only came up to about half of th jar. I thought the snow would make more than that! There were also a lot of bubbles floating up to the as the snow melted.

We opened the jar to empty it and it smelled very bad! It must have had bacteria in there. I say this to be careful if you open it up….watch your nose and don’t inhale that much. 🙂

If you try this activity at home, please post pictures to my Facebook page! I’d love to see how it turned out and what your predictions were!