This is a slightly different take on the classic carnation experiment, showing how plants "drink" water and how it goes up the stem and to the leaves. We used celery because 1) it was cheaper and 2) I knew Kay would eat the leftovers. (Have you ever met a 4-year-old who asks for celery? She's the only one I know!)
I picked 3 glasses and Kay added the water and I even (bravely, I thought) let her put in the food coloring drops (with many admonitions of "be careful" you can be sure!). My not-so-bright idea was to use blue, red and green. Green? They're already green! But I didn't think of that until after it was all set up so we let it be. Then we put in the celery stalks with the bottom cut off and it was time to wait. As you may have already realized, waiting is not a strong point for preschoolers, so after checking it every few minutes and finding no change, she pretty much forgot about it.
In a few hours there was a tint of red in the celery in the red cup, but the others showed nothing. Next day same thing, so I made a few changes. First, I added a few more drops of food coloring. I also put in some stalks with lighter leaves.
By day 3, there was recognizable colors in the tips of the lighter leaves and day 4 you could really see the colors. Day 4 was also the last day of our experiment because the celery leaves were getting too crinkly to continue. We examined the leaves, pointing out the colors.
The red really showed up well, which may have had to do with the leaves being especially light in that cup.
The blue also did pretty well.
Surprisingly, the green food coloring did show up, but you would only know if you were looking for it because, well, leaves are already green! My only suggestion would be -don't use green food coloring for green celery stalks!
Tidak ada komentar:
Posting Komentar