The Marian Centre Bray: Montessori Plant Magic

This experiment is great for teaching children about plants and flowers, as the theme for this month is All About Plants, I though this experiment would be interesting and fun !

I have been doing this experiment for years as a montessori teacher and the children have always loved, so lets try it at home.

Read on to see how you can turn white flowers into rainbow flowers! -

Color Changing Flowers

Materials

White flowers
Food colouring
Cups or glasses
Scissors

Method

You will want to begin with six white flowers, daisies roses or carnations.
Start by trimming the flowers so that they will fit nicely into whatever cups or glasses you are using.
Giving the flowers a fresh cut also helps them to absorb the colored water more quickly.
Fill your cups with the desired amount of water, and then have kids add several drops of food coloring and a flower to each cup.

Have kids make observations and hypothesize what will happen to the flowers as they live in the coloured water.
Then, place the flowers in a sunny window.

It is now time to observe!-

Making Rainbow Flowers

Have kids observe the flowers over the next few days, recording any changes.
In just a few hours you will start to notice a slight change!

And after a handful of days you may not be able to believe your eyes!

As the flowers drink in the coloured water they transform into a beautiful rainbow right before your eyes

Flower Experiment Results-

This is what our flowers looked like after 10 days in the water.

So colorful and fun!

What Did We Learn By Doing This Experiment Again?

This experiment takes more time with certain flowers.
The first time we tried this we used white roses, and those changed colour overnight. I was surprised to discover that the daisies took much longer.
While the daisies started to change after a few days they were not fully saturated until 14 days after we began the experiment.