Children love to get their hands-on science. It sparkles their creativity and curiosity because they use all of their senses as a way of learning.
When children are physically engaged in the learning process, it becomes a whole experience that they will remember and, along with that, all the cool facts they've learned and discoveries they made.
Hands on science increases children motivation to learn, enhances their creativity to help become happy and confident learners.
With this science experiment, children will feel like true scientists! Adding elements together, making discoveries and learn to rely on evidence are all benefits from this awesome experience.
The butterfly pea experiment was enjoyable and exciting for us, and I'm sure it will be the same for you.
Before this experiment, I had never heard of Butterfly Pea since I'm not a tea drinker (team coffee here) nor a flower enthusiast. It was a friend that mentioned this flower to me at a BBQ in Africa. She told me it makes the water turn blue and also gave me some seeds for me to plant (thank you, friend.)
When I got home from this BBQ, I realized, to my surprise, that the "bush" that was growing on the fence between my neighbor and me was a butterfly pea!
I was excited because I knew that the kids and I would have a lot of fun experimenting with the flower.
That following week, I gave my children a little bucket and they went to harvest the flowers themselves.
The bush belonged to the neighbors and was mainly grown on our side of the backyard, through the fence. Therefore, I asked the kids to pick the flowers that fell to the ground. In a week, they each had a bucket full!
If your neighbor doesn't have a bush, worry not! There is plenty of butterfly pea online and you can grab yourself a bag for as little as 6$. This is what we did when we got back to the States and did this experiment again because it was so much fun.
Moms of the Future Learning Tip
This experience can be presented as an invitation to learn early concepts of chemistry. Invitations are activities used to invite children to learn about one specific concept through action and occurrence. Simply lay the tools on the table and have the children measure the ingredients on their own.
Tools:
There will be cutting in this activity, so the presence of an adult is essential unless you have lemon juice already squeezed for them.
They're really only two steps in this awesome experience.
The first step involves mixing the flowers with the water to get that beautiful blue hued color.
The second step just requires you to add lemon or lime juice to the mix and watch it turn to indigo.
This step is optional : You could take it a step further and add hibiscus to your concoction. Watch it turn into a beautiful fuchsia. How delightful!
When we came back to the US, we did the experience again and took it a step further by adding hibiscus to the butterfly tea. It was really worth it and if you like tea, then you would probably enjoy it even more!
To follow through this experiment, we used the sheet "The Scientific Process" that you can use for this example or any other experiment. Just download and follow through with it. I have included one with only boxes for the smaller kids to draw their observations and ideas.
This was a good opportunity for the kids to learn about Ph and acidity as a science topic.
We were also interested in the culture and uses of the butterfly pea around the world. For example, we learned that Flower pea is widely used in South East Asia, especially Thailand and Malaysia in cuisine.
I hope you and the little ones had fun doing this awesome experiment! Make sure to download the science experiment sheet to discuss and further elaborate on discoveries.