The Great Salt Plains

What an awesome labor day! Today my husband and I took the girls to the salt plains. We had so much fun digging for crystals. What a fun way to learn, explore and play. I wish we had prepared a little better. Like bringing water to rinse our crystals and wash our hands. A towel would have been nice. My oldest daughter, even suggested a change of clothing, lol. We sure needed it. I guess when your digging in mud, your bound to get dirty. We drove to a near by town and cleaned the best we could. What a great day spent and all it cost us was a lil bit of gas. Can't beat that. :)  Also, the view of the salt plains is so beautiful. 


The Great Salt Plains in northwestern Oklahoma is the only place in the world
to find unique hourglass-shaped selenite crystals. These crystals attract rock enthusiasts from around the world.  The Area was closed for several years to clean the area of World War II training artifacts. The area is once again open for public digging from April 1-October 15. 


These hourglass selenite crystals have also been designated as Oklahoma’s State Crystal



Here are some great resources about the The Great Salt Plains. (Just click links below)


The Great Salt Plains

Let's Go Crystal Digging (Video)


Field Trip Cruiser - The Great Salt Plains

Selenite Crystals

Selenite Crystal Digging

History of GREAT SALT PLAINS

Map of The Great Salt Plains

Plan a Trip to The Great Salt Plains

    

Homemade Crystals

We started today off with a wonderful start. Great moods, great breakfast, and a great experiment. 

We read a wonderful book about rocks and crystals. We read about how crystals are formed. I wanted the girls to be able to do a experiment that would show them crystals being formed. 
 
here is a link to show how to set up the experiment:

How can you make homemade crystals without a kit?

The easiest way to make crystals is to fill up a tall cup of warm water with lots of table salt dissolved in it. Take a piece of thick string or yarn, tie it in the middle of a pencil or stick. Suspend the string into a cup of water by placing the pencil/stick across the cup. As the water evaporates every day you'll see crystals forming on the string. For prettier results add a drop of food coloring to the water. In about a week you should have a beautiful growth on your string

We added red food coloring, so hopefully in a few days we will have red crystals that have formed on our string.

Update: Caterpillar is still in it's cocoon. Checking it everyday and it seems to still wiggle around, not sure what is taking so long for it to come out, but we are still waiting.