Tag: plant science for children (Page 5 of 5)

Weekend Science Fun: Mother’s Day Science Projects

Pssst, Kids:  Mother’s Day is coming up soon. Are you looking for science and art projects that will be nice Mother’s Day presents? Here are a few ideas. I would love to hear yours.

1.    Decorate a pot and plant a flower, houseplant or herb for your mother to enjoy.
Gather:

  • Clay pot of appropriate size
  • Potting soil and water
  • Pot paint (preferred) or acrylic craft paint, acrylic paint markers (optional).
  • Plant or seeds

Decorate the pot by painting it and let it dry. The acrylic paint dries fairly quickly so you can make designs. Use acrylic paint markers to add words such as “Happy Mother’s Day.”

flower pot

Cover the hole in the bottom of the pot with a small stone and fill pot about half way with potting soil, if you are using a plant purchased from a nursery. Add your plant and fill remaining soil around it. If you started some cuttings from the plant propagation activity, they would look great in a pot, too.

If you want, you can also start with seeds. Fill the pot with potting soil and plant the seeds according to the instructions on the package. Here are some chives and basil plants just starting.

seedlings
Remember to keep your plants watered while you are waiting for that special day.

2.    Dye some white flowers her favorite color.
Gather:

  • Vases – one for each color you are going to test
  • Water
  • White flowers such as carnations
  • Food coloring

Place the white flowers in vases of water. If an adult is helping you, ask him or her to cut the stem at an angle, preferable under water, so the flowers can take up water easily. Add at least 20 drops of food coloring to each vase, a different color in each one. If you have enough vases and flowers, leave one without food coloring to use as a control. Watch and see what happens for about a day. Compare whether all the colors worked the same. Place all the flowers together in a pretty vase of fresh water and present to your mother.

3.    Make a picture or card of pressed flowers.
Did you press any flowers with a plant press from the activity about weeds? Use the flowers to make a nice flower bouquet that your mother can enjoy for a long time.

There are several ways to use pressed flowers. The easiest is to glue the flowers to a piece of paper with white glue. Use a small paint brush and/or tweezers to help move the delicate dried plants. If you have some, special paper glue used in paper arts works best.

dried flower
Doesn’t this dried flower look a bit like a hummingbird?
You can also use contact and wax paper, as suggested at About.com.

4.    Draw a picture of her favorite flower and/or animal.
Use markers or crayons to draw a picture for your mom. If you want to try something new, try using watercolor markers to draw small circles for the body and head of animals and then add details with a black sharpie.

picture

Mix pressed plants and drawings for a neat effect.

5.    Make a card using the paper you made in the recycled paper activity.

6. Write your mom a poem. Mothers love poems!

For inspiration fold an origami animal, like the butterfly at the bottom of this post, and then write your poem on it.

These are just a few suggestions. If you have more, please let us know.

Weekend Science Fun: Plant Propagation

Want to get more greenery without spending the other kind of green (money)? Let’s take a look at how plants make more plants in ways other than from seeds.

A number of plants can be grown from parts of donor plants by taking what are called cuttings. The cutting is simply a stem with some leaves attached that has been cut off the donor plant. The cutting is then placed in water or moist soil, and over time roots develop.  Once the roots develop, plants in water can be moved to soil and in no time your new plant will be growing and sending out new leaves.

Examples:

Philodendron, geranium and coleus – cuttings can be started in water.

pothos

pothos

Pothos Ivy – cuttings can be placed in water, then moved to soil after roots develop.

jade

Jade plant  – cutting start in water or soil.

cactus pad

Prickly pear – can be started by simply placing pads in the soil.

saguaro seedling

By the way, cacti can also start from seeds. This is a saguaro seedling.

spider plant

Spider plant  – take the offshoots or baby plants and place in soil.

aloe with pups

Aloe and agave- the main plants send off small plants from the roots, called pups. The pups can be separated and replanted. The pups of the above aloe are slightly reddish in color and are towards the lower right in the pot.

Potential science experiments/activities:

1.    Learn the plant parts for different species of plants. For example, is the pad of a cactus a leaf or stem? What is a node? What is a petiole?
2.    Can you start a plant from the cutting of just a leaf, or does the leaf need to be attached to a stem?
3.    Treat some cuttings with commercial root starting hormone and compare to cuttings from the same plant without hormone. How do they differ over time? Figure out how many plants grow from each treatment, what their value is, and how much the hormone cost. Is it cost effective?

Edit: We got some hormone rooting powder this weekend and were surprised to find out that it is quite hazardous. You might want to read the label before you buy it. Be sure to read and follow all the instructions.

4.    Do jade plant cuttings start better in water or moist soil? What about in moist sand or cactus mix?
5.    Under what conditions do spider plants send out offshoots? How old do they need to be to start making more spider plants? How big? Do they make more when they are healthy or when they are stressed? How would you test these questions?
6.    Do spider plants ever flower? What about pothos ivy, aloes or agaves? If they don’t flower, can they make seeds?

7. Do aloes/agaves make more pups when they are in small pots, large pots, or when they are planted in the ground? This would be a long term study.

Hope you enjoy growing new plants. Let us know how your experiments turn out, or if you have any more suggestions for experiments or activities.

Note:  Most of the plants noted above can contain irritants or toxins, so keep them out of reach of small children.

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