Coloring Flowers

When I was at the grocery store, I noticed a bouquet of white flowers. It was in the "clearance" section since many of the flowers were very sad looking. I picked it up knowing that with some food color and water, we could have a little fun!

We started putting some food color in water. The more food color you use, the brighter the color in the flowers will be. We only used a few drops (which was all Nora wanted), but 30 or so drops of food color and you'll get much brighter flowers - this is a case of more is better, at least if you want super colorful!

 

As Nora dropped the color into the water, she took note of the fact that the color "splashed down fast and then floated up slow." Not bad for a three year old scientist!

 

Nora also noted that the color tended to be darker on the bottom of the cup, but once she started putting the flower stems in, the colors mixed up evenly.

 

This is a flower in the yellow color. I love how the edges of the petals change. It was very pretty. The blue is very brilliant, but I didn't get a good photo of the blue. Silly me, trying to take photos with the help of two kids!

 Once we were satisfied with the flowers, I removed them from the 4 cups of colored water and created one bouquet to enjoy. What else would you do with the remaining colored water. We took some droppers and decorated paper towels. Nora really enjoyed this!

 

 And the results were pretty! We will be turning her work into either flowers or butterflies to decorate the window.

Here is the final bouquet. We had very pale color because we only used a few drops of each color. But, we had a very pretty bouquet of pastels and Nora was rather pleased with them!

Before we began the experiment, I asked Nora what she thought would happen if we put food color in the water. She thought the stems would change color for green to another color -mixing green and the color added to the water. She was very pleased to see the water didn't change the color of the stems, but of the white petals. Shortly after she made this discovery, it was bath time. She asked me if we put food color in the tub if her hair would turn color. I'm sure if I let her try, she would have taken a blue bath!