Last weekend one of our favorite blogs, Teach Preschool, posted a fun activity she did with her class where they tie dyed pipe cleaner stars. As soon as I saw it I knew we had to make them. We were intrigued by the fact that the stars that she hung up on the door turned white again. Instead of just dying our own pipe cleaners we decided to do a little experiment to see if the sun had anything to do with the color change.
The kids made a bunch of pipe cleaner creations and we added some food coloring to bowls of water to dip them into. Teach Preschool added a little motion to the process and used bags instead – check out the link above for the full instructions.
Then the kids dipped and dyed their creations in the colors and we laid them on paper towels to dry.
Even the paper towels looked cool!
And then we turned it into a science experiment! We hung four of the pipe cleaner shapes on our back door in the sunshine and four in the dark pantry. The kids predicted that the sun would turn the group on the door white while the ones in the pantry would stay colored. What do you think happened?
They all turned white! Yep, it turns out the sun had nothing to do with it. It seems that as the water evaporated from the pipe cleaners the colored disappeared right along with it.
Our observation chart. As you can see in just as little as 5 hours we already had results! (In case you can’t read my 3 1/2 year old’s observation, at 20 hours it says “al wit” or all white.) The kids were so excited. We were able to see that once the pipe cleaner was white there was condensation on the inside of the bag. Very cool way to learn a little bit about the water cycle. Now that their creations are dry and white again we are going to try tie dying them again with watered down paint. Our own little “art cycle!”
Thanks Teach Preschool for inspiring such a fun art and science project!
Ok – this is soooooo cool! I am so excited you took the time to examine this idea more closely and love how you created and entire science experiment with the process for the kids to observe, predict, and record their results! Looks like we will have to give this another go to! I wonder if using the paint will make a difference. It must be the material of the pipe cleaners do not absorb the liquid??
I think so, the fuzziness of the chenille must keep out liquid. Who knew? It was definitely lots of fun to experiment with. We love your blog and activities! (And wish you were closer so we could enroll the little ones!) Thanks so much for stopping by!