COLORING FLOWERS: Science experiment for kids

My daughter thrives on coloring books and pages, she can just finish bundles of paper and hours together just coloring her heart away. 

So, why not color real flowers, it would be a fun and magical activity for a 4-year-old.

We brought home some beautiful white roses but they were so pretty that we needed some convincing to carry on with the experiment :)

What do we need??

• Oodles of patience. :) May take 2 days to more than a week depending on type of flower and color used.
• White or pale flowers. Roses, carnations, daisies, etc.
• Transparent cups/ glasses/ vases
• Food color. We used them, But I would still test the experiment with other colors like water paints.

So here we go:

Place the cut flowers into the cups of colored water and wait. It may take at least 24 hours for the colors to start showing. And may be wait even more for the colors to show up well. The depth of the colors depend on how fresh the flowers are , the type of flower, the length of stem, the type of color etc. 

Things we discussed as we colored the flowers:

• What colors had we used- primary or their combinations
• How plants or stems uptake water. My daughter thought the flowers drank the colored water. They drank the colors they liked best :) which was red and yellow.
• The pattern by which the color spread through the petals
• Which color came up most
• For older children it would be fun to repeat the experiment with different flowers and colors from different sources. 
• We could split stems to get a flower to take up two or more colors at the same time
• The capillary action (also for older kids)

Along the experiment, there were constant updates from the little one and umpteen questions.
It was a fun activity and to her little mind I guess a little bit magical too.

Catch our other activities involving color.
Magic-milk Color experiment
Rainbow Pinwheel

FARZ

This post has been linked to:

Link and Learn @ No Time For Flash cards
STEM Saturday