Celery Science: Preschool Sensory Activities

Hey yawl! How are you all doing? I’m Natasha from over at Tiny Tots  Adventures where  I blog about some of the activities  that I do with my toddler and preschooler. I’m here to share a few of our preschool  sensory  activities  that we love doing so much.

Today I want to share with you  all  a project  that I did with my preschooler  on the fly. I had some old celery  in the fridge  that I wasn’t using and it dawned on me that we were supposed to have turned  a carnation blue this summer, but never got around to it. So this celery would be perfect to show how plants stay hydrated.

What we used:

• Glass Jar
• Water
• Food coloring
• Celery stalks

 

What we did:

1. Poured the water into the jar
2. Added food coloring to the water
3. Stuck the celery in the colored water

My preschooler looked at me after we put the celery in the water and asked ” Is this one of them projects that we have to wait on?” she is learning that everything won’t produce immediate results. This is a lesson that we learned when we were working with ice. She checked back at dinner time and told me she seen some of the pink coming, but I couldn’t see it so for me it don’t count but for her it does.

The next morning I was awaken to a kid jumping up and down in my room for me to wake up and come and see. Walked downstairs and the first thing that hit me was the smell of celery. She let me know that the smell was okay, “That’s the celery coming back to life.” Yes, our wilted celery was now standing up tall and the smell of celery was very strong in our creative learning center. That’s now what she called me down for though. She called me down to see the beautiful pink that the leaves on the celery had turned.

I asked her if she knew how the celery turned pink while we were sleeping, her answer was time made it turn pink. I left it alone because I know that my child will want to look and find out if she was right. We left the celery to sit for another night in the colored water.

The next morning she wakes me up and soon as I walk into the hall the smell of celery meets me, and my preschooler is very excited to show me her experiment. As we are walking down the stairs she tells me she thinks that yes time helps the celery turn pretty pink but she knows that there is something else making the leaves turn pink. We get down the stairs and she shows the bottom of one of the stalks and points to all the pink down there.

She has her tools laid out for her to examine the celery to tell how the leaves turn pink. She cuts one of the stalks into little pieces and notices that there are little pink dots. She cuts it all the way up to see how far they go.

After she cuts it she then takes a knife and scrapes the celery to get to the little pink dots and she notices that there are little pink strings in the celery and she is completely fascinated by all of this. She uses my tweezers (It’s okay I don’t pluck anything off myself anymore) and starts to remove the pink strings as gently as she could.

She has discovered what was making the leaves turn pink. This guys in my book is a winner. She tasted the celery and it didn’t change flavors it’s still nasty celery in her book, but she showed me that the water is what made the celery live again and she placed the rest of our celery in clear water to keep it live. The house smells of celery and everyone else is kind of upset with it, but who’s going to argue with a four year old with proven science about keeping our celery alive.

This was one of our unexpected activities. I love when things like this happens, I love when an activity takes more than a day and it can really hold her interest for longer than the activity can go on. I love that right after this activity she used the knowledge that she had just acquired.

I hope that you all enjoyed one of our preschool sensory activities, I enjoyed living it and sharing it with you all. Well, it’s time for me to tend to my girls, later.