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June 22, 2018

Salt Crystal Painting STEAM Activity

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By now you are familiar with STEM activities, but do you know about STEAM?

It takes STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) to a whole new level by incorporating art!

These activities are all the rage these days for two big reasons. They are a TON of fun and they get kids thinking critically and using even more areas of their brains! And raising creative, problem solvers is something we are all striving to do.

Try this salt crystal painting STEAM activity to add a extra fun (and learning!) to your day!

Try salt crystal painting! A fun science and art activity for preschool kids! #preschoolSTEAM #Preschoolscience #preschoolart #STEAMactivities

Salt Crystal Painting

Materials:

  • White cardstock
  • White school glue
  • Table salt
  • Pipette or eye dropper
  • 4 cups
  • Food coloring
  • Water

How salt crystal painting looks and works!

Instructions:

  1. Pour water into four cups, to just fill them partially.
  2. Place a few drops of food coloring into each of the cups of water and stir to combine the color well.
  3. Draw a design onto the front of a piece of white cardstock with a bottle of white school glue. The design can be anything you like.
  4. Sprinkle some table salt over the top of the design that you created with the glue. Do this before the glue has dried so that the salt sticks to it well. You will want to do this over a garbage can or other container to catch the extra salt and avoid making a mess.
  5. You can either wait for the glue to dry, or move directly on to coloring your creation. Using a pipette or eye dropper, drop colored water down over the different parts of your salt crystal drawing. Try to drop the water only onto the salt crystals themselves, and not onto the actual cardstock. You can mix colors to see what new shades they make.
  6. Set the salt crystal drawing to the side for several hours to dry completely before displaying.  

Super cool salt crystal science and art!

Experiment with different designs and colors to see how your salt crystal paintings change. You can even try different different backdrops like cardboard and tin foil to see how those effect your paintings.

Fun STEAM project for kids! Make salt crystal paintings

Getting kids to start to problem solve like scientists while being creative just starts with the project. The real fun begins when you begin to make it your own!

See the art and science magic in action:

More Science Fun for Kids

The fun doesn’t have to stop here! We’ve got lots of STEAM projects your kids will love!

Check out our HUGE list of super cool science experiment for kids. You’ll find a ton to keep you busy and learning!

About Megan Sheakoski

Megan is the creator of Coffee Cups and Crayons, a blog full of simple fun and learning. She believes that kids’ activities don’t have to be complicated to be fun and that learning is better with play.

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Comments

  1. Vicki jorgensen says

    July 13, 2018 at 3:27 am

    I really like this love science with kids

    Reply
  2. Mary says

    June 16, 2020 at 9:03 pm

    Your ideas are so clever and creative. Thank you for sharing. I love making learning fun.
    Thank you!

    Reply
  3. Raúl Fernández says

    April 12, 2022 at 7:37 am

    This is neat. I think This one is making it into the top 5 for the upcoming homeschool science fair.
    Only one correction in the write-up: it’s “affect”
    “…to see how those affect your paintings.”
    Thanks for all the great ideas!

    Reply

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