Preschool Celery Experiment - How a Tree Gets Water to Its Leaves
The weeping birch tree in my front yard has grown almost taller than my house! It doesn’t have leaves yet, but you can see the tiny buds where they’ll soon be. My preschoolers know trees need water to grow, but they want to know how such a big tree can get water to its leaves.
Here’s an experiment that shows preschoolers how a tree can get water to its branches and leaves.
What You Need:
6 - 8 inch stalk of celery
2 glasses or jars of water
2 colors of food coloring
What You Do:
Put the food coloring into the water, so you have a different color in each glass.
Split the celery stalk about halfway up from bottom, so it looks like a celery stalk with legs.
Place one of the “legs” in one glass of colored water, and the other “leg” in the second glass of colored water.
In a few hours, the tubes and leaf veins in the celery will take on the color that was in the glasses.
What You Learned:
Water moves upward in the stems of plants and trees. The same thing happens in trees. That’s how my big tree can get water to all its leaves, even the ones at the very top!
