10+ Low-Prep Christmas Experiments You Can Do in a Jar

Who doesn’t love Christmas? And best of all, these Christmas experiments can be done in jars you already have at home!

Christmas is big at our house. We LOVE all things glittery, Christmas baking, Christmas presents, Santa, everything!

We also love Christmas experiments, either Christmas STEM challenge ideas or Christmas science experiments.

We’ve found over the years that jars are the perfect container for most of our science experiments.

What are the Best Christmas Science Experiments?

The best Christmas science experiments are experiments that offer two benefits.

The Christmas STEM activity should match an interest of your child.
The Christmas science experiment should offer open-ended science exploration and follow the scientific method.

How to Do a Christmas Science Experiment

If you’re just starting with Christmas science or science at home, you may not be familiar with the scientific method. So what is the scientific method?

Basically, the scientific method has 4 parts and follows this formula:

Question
Expected answer (or hypothesis)
Test the answer (or experiment)
Record the data and experiment results

Older children can also have a fifth part of the experiment, which is re-testing.

Supplies for Christmas Experiments

A jar is like a science flask, made of glass, and as measurements on the side (in many cases). A regular mason jar fits the bill and costs much less than traditional science tools!

There are even plastic jars that work well for experiments with little kids. You can also check out our list of supplies for science experiments to create a STEM starter kit.

Most people already have jars in their kitchen, which means you already have everything you need to complete these Christmas experiments!

So grab a jar, and let’s get started!

The Easiest Christmas Experiments in a Jar

Many of these Christmas science experiments are Christmas chemistry experiments with a fun chemistry science theme!

But these experiments also explore scientific concepts like weather, temperature, molecular bonds, solutions, engineering and design, and more!

If you have older kids, the Hot Ice Science Experiment is a fun one. It takes time and patience to complete this experiment (and it will STINK in your house), but the results are amazing! How cool is it to be able to make ice from vinegar and baking soda?

One of the earliest Christmas science experiments that we love is How to Make Frost in a Can. Kids of all ages can do this. We’ve done it in a jar and in a can.

simple christmas science projects for kids

You can’t go wrong with a fun Candy Cane Slime Recipe. No matter how many times my kids have made slime, they still love learning about chemical bonds and how slime forms. Every time we do the experiment we talk about a new area of the science behind it.

This peppermint slime has a cooling effect. The Cool Peppermint Slime Recipe is a fun Christmas chemistry experiment to try once you’ve tried basic slime.

If you want a science experiment that mixes light and slime, the Christmas Light Slime Recipe is the experiment for you!

We learned about chemical reactions while making these Fizzing Christmas Science Ornaments a few years ago, and they still hang on our Christmas tree every year! A fun way to make those science experiment memories last.

Another favorite science experiment in our house is Salt Crystal Candy Canes. They look so beautiful perched on a lighted branch. Sometimes we talk about solutions when we do this experiment and sometimes we talk about bonds.

Let your kids stretch their engineering and designs skills when they Make a DIY Snow Globe! You can purchase DIY snow globe kits, but you can also do this in jars you already have.

This is one of our favorite Chrismas chemistry experiments we’ve ever done. We made these DIY Bubbling Christmas Lights inside light-shaped ornaments, but they would look just as pretty (and be a lot less messy) inside tiny jars like these.

We dressed up a mason jar of slime to look like a Santa suit and the results were so cute! The Santa Suit Slime Recipe would make a fun gift to give to friends after the science lesson is over.

Those are our favorite Christmas Experiments in jars. There’s a lot of learning that you can do in a jar!