Make Queen Esther's Gems - With Love, Ima

There is a lot to like about Queen Esther but one fun aspect is to assume a queen like her would have some awesome jewels and gems and what better activity than to create our own Make Queen Esther’s Gems to get into the Purim thrill? Combine science, art and fun to create your own DIY Queen Esther’s Gems and explore this character’s role in the story of Purim.

What You’ll Need

Rock Salt
Glue (I always buy my glue in bulk and then use as needed)
Liquid watercolors or food coloring
Bowls (we used bowls for mixing the rock salt and color and a muffin tin for the glue and rock salt)
Parchment paper

Putting It Together

Dye your rock salt whatever colors you wish either using liquid watercolors or food coloring. We did this by placing the rock salt in bowls then squirting in some liquid watercolors. Learn from our mistake: only squirt a little, it spreads easily! Use your fingers or a spoon to help spread the color. If you need more color, then add a little by little more but we added way more than we needed to which meant a longer drying time.
Let the rock salt dry. It should dry overnight. But if you’re like us and added too much coloring … it took a few days, gulp!
Once the dyed rock salt is dry, add a little bit of glue at a time to the salt (or vice versa) to create the gems. Let dry. More advice: add too much glue and the salt gets pasty. You want to be able to see the edges and crystals.
Enjoy your beautiful gems and talk about what it might have been like for Esther to be a Queen in Shushan. We have some book recommendations that you may enjoy supplementing this craft with!

And check back this week for the other Purim activities we did with these gems:

Finished & Loving It

This is a gooey messy science + art activity. And my kids are all about those. But come prepared for this adventure! Fingers and hands were temporarily dyed and the glue can be a total nightmare unless you put down protective covering on your workspace. But the joy of the kids as they combined, observed, and created? PRICELESS!

We dyed our rock salt the different colors of liquid watercolors we had available. I especially like how the blues and purples combined together when making the gems. However, if you want to control the situation and not have a brown gem fest, make sure to only use a couple complimentary colors.

I let my kids have free range while I recorded their scientific approach. The science consisted of choosing which colors to combine, observing what happens when those colors combined, as well as observing and problem solving the amount of rock salt to glue. We did not do any measurements, it was all by touch and feel. Which meant some gems turned out a bit soft and squishy and others retained their crystal forms. This is science! Experiments in action! The kids were interested in how adding more glue or salt changed the texture. And we had some happiness and some disappointment over how some of the gems turned out. And that’s ok! Again: science! They were experimenting, observing, and reacting. And I loved it.

I also love how the gems turned out. They are really quite pretty. And, as you’ll see if you check back this week, can be used in a variety of activities. They are not the most sturdy of pieces, but they can still be used in many ways to learn more about the story of Purim and have fun too, of course!