Here’s a fun way to make plain old flowers something fabulous!
Somehow it’s fallen on me to be the science teacher at my school. Now, science isn’t really the kind of thing 2-6 year olds are really going to get into, at least not on some serious, conceptual level. But if you can make stuff fun, put it in terms they can relate to and give them an activity where they can see some results, they’ll go for it.We have set themes for each month, and it’s up to me to come up with lessons, lectures, experiments and/or activities. I really don’t know how I got picked for this, but I seem to be doing an okay job of it.
Which probably means I’ll be stuck with it forever.
No biggie, really. I kind of get a kick out of it. This month was all about butterfly life-cycles, but we did something different last week. Even though our first week back from break was after Mother’s Day, we wanted to do something the kids could take home and show their moms. I suggested dying flowers, and everybody went for it. If you’ve never done it before, all you need is a white flower (we used carnations), a jar/cup/vase, water and some food coloring. (Professional florists use a paint-like dye that comes in a powdered form, but there’s no need to go all out when you can get the same results more easily and for less money.) ? Put a reasonable amount of water in whatever container you’re using.? Add a healthy dose of your chosen color. (Don’t skimp here, or it’ll take forever and the colors won’t be as strong.)? Cut the stems of your flowers to a length suitable for your container and put them in. If there are any leaves close to the bottom of the stem, pull them off. No point in them sucking up dye that needs to get to the petals.? It’s also a good idea to leave the flowers out of water for a day or two before doing this. It’ll make them thirstier and they’ll really drink up the color.
Here’s how the ones we did at school came out:
This violet came from mixing the blue and red together that we’d used on a couple test runs:
Neat effect here, eh?
To do this, split the stem vertically and put one side in one color and the other in a different one. I found this trick online while I was looking for tips on how to do this. We’d gotten the flowers for school from a student’s mom who works in a florist shop. She knew about dying flowers, but had never seen this trick before.
I earned a nice round of “Sugoi! Sugoi! Sugoi!” from her. ^.^