Christmas-Themed Science Activities - three fun activities you can do with your middle or high school science class. Each activity can be completed in a single class and includes a scientific explanation of what happens and why.

Add some holiday magic to your middle school science lessons with this festive bundle of Christmas science experiments! Students will deck the halls and spread holiday cheer while exploring key chemistry concepts with these three engaging hands-on activities.

1) Christmas Ornament Crystal Snowflakes

First, grow gorgeous crystalline snowflake ornaments with the Christmas Ornament Crystal Snowflakes activity.

Students will dissolve borax in hot water to create a super-saturated solution. By dipping pipe cleaner snowflakes into the borax solution and allowing crystals to form as it cools, students can create sparkly snowflake decorations that demonstrate solubility, supersaturation, and crystallization. The stunning crystals that form turn a simple pipe cleaner into a glittery ornament perfect for trimming a miniature classroom tree!

2) Candy Cane Chemistry Experiment

Next, unwrap some colorful chemistry with the Candy Cane Chemistry experiment.

By dissolving red and green candy canes in water, students can layer the dense sugar solutions by color. This activity demonstrates density and polarity principles in a tasty way! The candy cane colors remain separated in stacked layers rather than mixing, allowing students to observe differences in density first-hand.

It's a sweet demonstration of polarity, solubility, and density concepts.

3) Christmas Tree Chromatography

Finally, have students try their hand at paper chromatography to separate the pigments in colorful markers with the Christmas Tree Chromatography activity.

Students will watch in wonder as the inks separate into bands of color before their eyes as the water moves up the coffee filter paper tree.

Get into the spirit of the season by using red, green, and black markers to decorate miniature paper Christmas trees. Then discuss chromatography, capillary action, polarity, solubility, and more based on the students' observations.

NGSS:

These christmas-themed science activities are associated with the following Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)

MS-PS1-1 - Develop models to describe the atomic composition of simple molecules and extended structures.

The activities involving solubility, crystallization, and solutions could relate to this standard as students develop models of dissolving and molecular interactions at the particulate level.

MS-PS1-2 - Analyze and interpret data on the properties of substances before and after the substances interact to determine if a chemical reaction has occurred.

So in summary, these Christmas science activities provide engaging opportunities for students to develop models and analyze chemical interactions related to the disciplinary core ideas in the Physical Sciences domains of the NGSS. The hands-on investigations integrate scientific practices and crosscutting concepts as well.