On Tuesday we had some really cool people called STEM Leaders come to visit our classroom. They are big kids from Primary 6 who love science, and they came to do a real-life experiment with us!

We know what “STEM” means. It’s Science, Technology, Engineering, and Maths. They told us that scientists always ask “why?” and “how?” – and that’s exactly what we did.

The Challenge: Can we make a flower change colour?

The STEM Leaders showed us what we were going to use. We had:

1. Clear plastic cups.

2. Fresh water.

3. Bottles of brightly coloured liquid (we learned this was “food colouring”).

4. Beautiful, plain white carnation flowers.

Step 1: Getting Messy (a little bit!)

First, we had to pour water into our cups. Then came the best part: adding the colour! The STEM Leaders let us choose. Some groups chose blue and some chose red. We put lots of drops in until the water looked really bright, like magic juice.

Then, the STEM Leaders carefully helped us trim the bottom of the flower stems (scientists call this cutting at an “angle”!). We put one white flower into each cup of coloured water. It just sat there looking white.

Step 2: The Big Question (and Waiting…)

The STEM Leaders asked us to make a prediction. (That’s a fancy science word for a smart guess!). We had to think about what would happen next.

Here are some of things we thought:

• “I think the petals will turn blue because they drink the water.”

• “I think the flower will stay white.”

• “Maybe the flower will just die because it doesn’t like the colour.”

We didn’t know who was right! We had to leave our flowers sitting on the sunny windowsill and wait. It was so hard to wait until the end of the week!

Step 3: THE REVEAL!

When we came into the classroom on Friday, we all ran straight to the windowsill.

W-O-W! Our prediction was right! The blue group’s flowers had tiny blue stripes all over the petals. The red group’s flower looked like it had red veins! They were turning the colour of the water! It was super cool! We couldn’t believe our eyes.

So, How Did It Work?

The STEM Leaders explained everything to us, but it sounds like magic. They said that plants “drink” water from the soil using their roots (but our flowers didn’t have roots, just stems). The stems work like a giant straw! The flower uses these tiny straws to suck up the water all the way from the bottom up to the leaves and the petals.

Because the water was filled with food colouring, the colour got sucked up too. That’s why the plain white petals started to show the colour!

We Loved Being Scientists!

We had such a brilliant time with the STEM Leaders. We felt like real scientists because we got to ask questions, make a guess, do the experiment ourselves, and see what happened. We can’t wait for them to come back and do another experiment with us!

Thank you so much to the STEM Leaders for coming to our class!

Make sure you ask us about it at home!