It is no secret that I adore science projects. This year my daughter (first grade) is learning about botany. She is thoroughly enjoying her adventures in the plant world, and to supplement that we decided to make split colored daisies. This is a fun, and really inexpensive project. And the best part in my opinion is that you don’t need a ton of time to complete it. You set it up and wait.

We used daisies for a few reasons. First of all, because they are white. White flowers will obviously take the color better than other flowers. We also chose daisies because they are inexpensive. You might even be able to find some wild ones growing.

You will need:

White flowers
Food coloring
Water
Two glasses per flower
Segmenting to cut the flower stems with. I used an Exacto knife, but scissors work just as well.

Instructions:

1. You want flowers with good long stems. Cut the stems in half, as close to straight down the middle as you can.
2. Next, fill your glasses with water. They don’t have to be completely filled to the top, but enough that the stems will touch the water when you put the flowers in. Place the glasses directly next to each other.
3. Now, one of your glasses needs food coloring! You can add as much or as little as you want. We added most of a bottle of red. You don’t have to leave the other glass empty either. You can add another color to it to make your flower a combination of colors. We chose to put red on one side, and blue on the other.
4. When you have your glasses ready, place the flower stems, one on each side in each glass. And wait.
5. To make this an official science project, have your child make a hypothesis about what is going to happen. Will the colored water affect the flower? If so, how? If you used two colors, what will happen where the colors meet?
6. After a few hours, or even better, over night, your flower will have taken on the colors of the water. If like us, you chose to use more than one colors the two will have mixed just a little in the middle. –Stephanie Wright