Chromatography Flowers!

Oh my heavens, we did the loveliest project today, and we officially give it a major two thumbs up for so many reasons!

First: it didn’t require a lot of materials. Just markers, water (in some shallow cups), and coffee filters.

Second: it allowed us to color (which we love), and spend a decent chunk of time doing so. It was an excellent hour of creativity.

Third: it actually fit within the science and project bucket together. I originally found the concept when I was searching for Monday, Science FUN Day ideas, but we just couldn’t wait a week to get to it.

If you’re curious, heeeere’s the official smarty pants description of chromatography (from one of the many websites I discovered this project on, but I can’t remember the specific one, now):

But really, it doesn’t take genius wording to just say: the water will bleed through the colors and look really cool. ;)

So we started with our coffee filters (hilarious to think how long it’s been since I actually purchased some of these bad boys)...



And just went nuts doing a handful of designs and more/less saturation of color on the filters to see what would work in the niftiest ways.



Then scrunched the filters up in a flower shape...



And set them gently in a shallow cup of water so they could soak.



And we could stare at them. :)



Chica was dressed as a character from a video she’d been watching, tehe...



















They were really into watching their little baby flowers soak. :)

And it was fascinating to see how the color bled out from the center—fast or slow, depending on the color and the saturation, and all sorts of nifty science reasons. :)







When the colors bled to the end of each filter, I removed them from the water and laid them out flat on some paper towels so they could dry.

They dried up amazingly fast (about 30 minutes), so we didn’t have too wait long before twisting pipe cleaners around the ends as the stems. 



And my precious Chicklet demanded that hers be together as a bouquet, so that’s what we did.



Give the cutie pie whatever she wants!









So there you have it: a really easy and lovely project that I can see us doing multiple times if the summer drags on, ha.

Even if we start to go downhill tomorrow, we’ve managed a couple of productive days with school work, swimming, science and project fun. I think tomorrow might be slightly cooler than the record temps we hit today, so we might try to sneak in a morning bike ride before the oppressive heat. And then, who knows?? Maybe laziness.

But heeeeere’s hoping I can keep these tiny humans busy and not cranky!

Over and out.