Friday Fun

It's Friday, and Friday's are for fun.

Introduce your toddler or preschooler to science with a simple activity to show how plants take in water through osmosis.

You will need:
1. Glass
2. Water
3. Food coloring
4. Spoon
5. Stalk of celery with leaves still on the top
6. Knife
7. Cutting Board

What you do:

1. Fill your glass half full with water.
2. Add eight to ten drops of red food coloring to the water in the glass.
3. Use a spoon to stir the water and food coloring.
4. Put the stalk of celery in the glass. The leaves should be at the top!
5. Leave it alone for several hours or even overnight.
6. Come back and look at the celery.

What is happening?

Do you see little marks on the leaves? Take the celery out of the glass. On a cutting board, use a knife to cut a cross section of the celery stalk. With your child look at the celery stalk. You will see lines or what we sometimes call "strings" of the celery are the same color as the food coloring. On the outer edge of the stalk you will also see little colored dots.

We see evidence that water is absorbed or sucked up by a plant. It travels up the stalk and then into the leaves. This is how water is conducted and circulated in plants. Try this experiment with white carnations or Queen Anne's Lace.


Note: This experiment requires some leaves, since a plant's circulation is powered by "transpirational pull"—the leaves "breathing." You will also get better results if you cut the bottom of the stalk (or flower stem) to expose a fresh edge that has not become clogged or dried up.

Credits: reachoutmichigan.org and teaching-tiny-tots.com