Preschool STEAM: Root Study

This month it's all about Growing Gardens with our Mother Goose Time preschool curriculum.

Living in Texas you have to establish your garden bed by March or April because if you wait until May, it'll be to hot.   While we planted peppers, tomatoes, and zinnias in our garden, my neighbors planted all sorts of herbs, and root vegetables including carrots and green onions in their raised beds. They let us pick from their garden whenever needed, so after breakfast my girl and I pulled up one carrot and one green onion to observe the roots on our 

ROOT Study day.

We had a quick discussion on roots before we made our experiment.

"Avaleigh, where are the roots?"

"At the bottom in the soil."

"What do you think the roots do?"

"Grow flowers."

I tried to explain to her that the roots deliver food and water to the plants.  We sang and acted out a little song called Roots Deliver from our MGT teacher guide.  Then I told her we would do a ROOTS Experiment that would help her see what roots do.  

9:00 am 

She set up our science experiment. 

(3 clear containers, liquid watercolors or food coloring, paper towels)

I told Avaleigh it was really important for us to not bother the experiment and just observe and look at it throughout the day. 

I asked her what she thought would happen. (hypothesis)

She knew red and blue make purple, which she stated, however she could not tell me HOW the clear water would become purple.  She could not understand the purpose of the paper towels.

10:00 am

We went out to observe our experiment.

She noticed that the clear water was changing.  "It's pink."

The blue had not made it through the paper towel at this point.

11:00 am

We went outside again to observe our experiment.  At this point I knew I needed to add a little more blue liquid watercolor to the blue water to make sure that the middle container would indeed turn purple.  I added just a little more blue water to the blue container. 

1:00pm

Before leaving on our errands, we took one more look.

"It's purple!" She exclaimed.

I asked her how the middle container turned purple and she just said, "Red and blue make purple."  She still would not tell me that it happened because of the paper towels.

I think if we were to do this again, I would set up another set of 3 containers, except with no paper towels (creating a control).  Then we could observe how one changed and the other didn't and how the paper towel is the key variable in the experiment. 

I think if I had done this, Avaleigh probably could have picked up on the fact that the paper towels pulled the color into the middle container of water, like roots do for plants.

I guess it's an experiment I will have to try :) 

I'll let yall know the outcome.  Until then...

Happy Experimenting!

For more STEAM ideas click here.

And if you want more great ideas, follow us on Facebook and Pinterest.