Plant Science - including Free Printables!

We had so much fun this week discovering how plants drink water!  The experiments are super fun and easy enough for the whole family to explore and learn together.

Experiment 1: Food Coloring Traveling Up a Celery Stalk
Fill a mason jar or glass half way with water strongly dyed with purple, red, or blue food coloring.  (We used separate mason jars so each child could make their own, but only 1 is needed.  As a variation, you could use several mason jars and add different color dye to each jar and predict what would happen).  Add 5 stalks (approximately the same size) to the jar.  After 3 hours remove one celery stalk from the jar.  Carefully peel around the edge (using a vegetable peeler if necessary) to see how far the dye has traveled up the “tubes”.  Draw your observations (use my free printable!).  Repeat at 6, 9, 24, and 48 hours.    

After 24-48 you should start to see the food coloring in the leaves.

Peel the stalk to observe the food coloring in the "tubes".

Experiment 2: Walking Water

Set you glasses up in a circle as shown in the photo below.  Fill every other jar halfway with water.  Add food coloring to dye one jar of water red, one yellow, and one blue.  Predict what will happen.  Roll each paper towel and drape them between the jars as shown.  Watch as the water walks up and over the paper towels into the other jar.  Depending on the absorbency of your paper towels, this experiment could take 20 minutes or several hours.  We started the experiment and watched for a few minutes, then went outside to play for a few hours.  When we came back in the children were all shouting, "Mommy, mommy, come see.  This is so cool!"  Record your observations on my free printable!

Set-up:

After 2 hours:

Don't forget to grab a copy of the Plant Science Experiment Sheets to record your predictions, observations, and conclusions!