Blue Celery

On rainy Tuesday we couldn't start our experiment about roots. So we started the one about stems. Maddie did a great job. I asked her why she thought a plant would need a stem. She told me that it worked like a straw so the plant could drink water. At that point I was wondering why we needed to do the experiment but seeing is believing so we went ahead. On top of that its just plain fun! We did it with our day care kids and they were fascinated too! We cut the bottom off a fresh piece of celery and then put it in water tinted blue with liquid food coloring. In just a couple of hours we had blue dots on the leaves and by the next day we had lots of blue not only in the leaves but also at the top of the stems. Today, Friday, the leaves are more blue than green. Tomorrow we are going to make another cut across the stem so we can hopefully observe the "tubes" pulling the water up the stem. I am also hoping we can get the microscope out and have a good look at the leaves....just for the fun of it! Since the weather looks like it will cooperate we will also work on our root experiment.