The question guiding our experiment this week was, how do leaves get water? We used red food colouring to turn clear water a dark red. Normally we can't see water travelling through leaves but if we change the colour of the water, maybe we can! We trimmed the petiole (or stem) off of two different leaves, a maple and a nasturtium and observed the changes over three days. The children noted their observations through discussion, labeled and detailed drawings, and in notes. It was interesting to compare the two leaves through this process. The maple's petiole turned a pronounced red, as did the midrib and some veins, while the nasturtium was fainter in colour and the water seemed to collect in one section on the blade of the leaf. Ultimately, we could see the function of the xylem tubes carrying water up and through the entire leaf which was pretty cool.
We connected some of our descriptive observations to our laugh-out-loud morning read aloud, We Are Growing, by Laurie Keller and Mo Willems. The grass is all growing, and everyone is something-est except for Walt. He's not the tallest or the curliest or the silliest, he's not the anything-est. A surprise at the end brings about a personal discovery for Walt. We had some fun describing the leaves with reference to this book. The nasturtium was a the droopiest, wilty-est, crumply-est.
We connected some of our descriptive observations to our laugh-out-loud morning read aloud, We Are Growing, by Laurie Keller and Mo Willems. The grass is all growing, and everyone is something-est except for Walt. He's not the tallest or the curliest or the silliest, he's not the anything-est. A surprise at the end brings about a personal discovery for Walt. We had some fun describing the leaves with reference to this book. The nasturtium was a the droopiest, wilty-est, crumply-est.
Here are some photos that capture the changes over the course of three days and some of the detailed observations the children recorded.
Day 1:
Day 2:
Day 3:
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