Activities for Kids: Understanding Plants & Colours

Every once in a while we like to do a learning activity that is somewhat outside the box. This week, one class was working on understanding colours and understanding how primary colours made secondary colours.

The second class was biology understanding how plants processed water.

So, to make it fun to learn both, this is what we did:

We took a bouquet of white carnations, some small vases, food colouring and some water.

We put blue and red in two different vases for primary colours. Then mixed blue and red to make purple and the last one was yellow and red mixed to make orange. By putting the food colouring in the water it show how plants “drink” and the colour moves up the stem to the petals, eventually changing the petals to the colour of the water.

Then we watched the process evolve over the next 24 hours.

The above photos were taken in 6 hour increments.

And 24 hours later I get a nice and colourful bouquet for me :

Heather Burke is a very involved Aunt of 6, who loves to make learning fun while being educational and can also be found at smartspaceorganizing.ca.

Valentine's Day Cupcakes

by Carly

Jake loves to help in the kitchen and making cakes or cupcakes is probably one of his favourite things to do. In light of Valentine's Day coming up, we decided to make some cupcakes to bring over to a friend's house.

We decided to make "rainbow" cupcakes, by separating the cake batter into four bowls (after it's been mixed) and colouring one bowl purple, one red and one pink.  We left the fourth bowl white.  I used both paste food colouring (for the red) and liquid food colouring for the pink and purple.  To make it easier for Jake to mix the colours into the X's and O's baking cups we picked up at the Dollar Store, I spooned the batter in freezer baggies and snipped a tiny hole in one corner.  We carefully put a bit of each colour into the baking cups, then baked the cupcakes according to the directions on the mix.

Baked

When the cupcakes had cooled, we iced them with pink and purple icing, topped with heart shaped sprinkles and tiny coloured dots.  Mmm!

Decorating

Finished

Eating

Do you make any Valentine's treats with your kids?

Carly has red hair and occasionally the temper to match.  She loves potatoes, rainy nights, photography, her husband, her five year old son, Jacob and her brand spanking new son, Noah. Probably in reverse order. She also blogs

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