REAL Snowflakes {How to Catch Your Own}

Did you know that REAL snowflakes really do look like snowflakes?

Sounds kinda funny, but I have never thought about looking at snowflakes until I saw the book The Story of Snow: The Science of Winter’s Wonder at the library and we had our first snow of the season! This book is really amazing!

But, snowflakes really do look like snowflakes!!! I only wish that I had my Canon to take the photos…it was off being repaired…so I had to try to work with what I had…but you can still sort of see the designs, which are pretty amazing!

Catch your own snow crystals: (directions from from The Story of Snow) We used some thick, dark paper. (In hindsight, we should have used non-textured black cardstock.) We set the paper outside on the front porch so that it would be cold. (If the paper is too warm, the snowflakes would melt immediately once they hit the paper.)

After allowing the paper to get cold for about 10-15 minutes we stepped out into the snowfall and “caught” a few on the paper. Remember, snowflakes are really small. You don’t want to try to catch big clumps of snowflakes, but individual ones.

Once you have some snowflakes on the paper, grab your magnifying glasses and check out the designs! No two are exactly the same!

Be sure to check out Science Sunday for more fun science activities.