Make Color Changing Flowers for a Holiday Centerpiece

I saw some pretty white daisies at the grocery store, and couldn’t resist buying them. Once I had them on my counter at home, I realized they would make a perfect 4th of July centerpiece. And it would look even better if we colored the daisies! One of my most popular posts on the blog is Color Changing Plants, so I adapted that experiment for this activity.

I can never resist buying a beautiful bunch of daisies

If you start the experiment today, you will have lightly colored flowers by the 4th. Even if you start it a few days later, it still makes a beautiful red, white and blue centerpiece with the colored water in the jars (even without the flowers changing color yet). So, go buy some white flowers (roses work best followed by carnations then daisies), and show your American pride this long weekend.

This picture was immediately after putting the flowers in the water. Even before the petals change color, it’s a beautiful and festive centerpiece

If you happen to come across this blog post any other time of the year, this activity can easily be adapted to any holiday. It will make a beautiful centerpiece any time of year, just select food coloring to match the holiday. I’m thinking red, pink and purple flowers for Valentine’s Day, green flowers for St. Patrick’s Day, orange and black flowers for Halloween, blue and white flowers for Hanukkah, and red and green flowers for Christmas!

Watch the Activity:

You can watch a video showcasing my photos of the activity with my voiceover explaining all the steps on my YouTube channel below:

Activity Overview:

This is a fun and easy activity to make a beautiful and patriotic 4th of July centerpiece by coloring flowers red, white, and blue! All you need are white flowers, food coloring, and 3 clear jars or vases. This activity can be tailored to any holiday by changing the colors used in the jars. This activity is recommended for kids ages 3+.

Materials:

White flower bunch, with at least 3 stems (carnations, daisies, or roses)
Red and blue food coloring (or whatever colors you’d like to color your flowers)
3 clear jars or vases
Water
Kitchen scissors (to cut the flower stems)

Safety:

Use caution when cutting the flower stems. You need very sharp scissors to cut the stems, so this step should be done by adult or with adult supervision of older kids. Food coloring is used in this activity, so I recommend using a table cloth to protect your table from any accidental spills of the colored water. Also, wear clothes that are ok to get stained by the food coloring, or put on an apron. Have towels on hand to clean up any water spill to prevent slips and falls.

Procedure:

Use sharp kitchen scissors to cut off at least 1 inch from the bottom of each flower’s stem (we found the shorter the stem, the quicker they absorbed the color and the more vibrant the color). Cut the stems at an angle to get more water adsorption.

My 8 year old daughter wanted to do this step so I closely supervised her

We cut the daisies into individual stems to speed up color adsorption

Fill 3 jars at least 1/2 full with water.

Add red food coloring into a jar of water until the color in the jar is a deep, vibrant red.

Add blue food coloring into another jar of water until the color in the jar is a deep, vibrant blue.

Place a stem of flowers into each of the three jars (one red, one blue, and one uncolored water).

My daughters used the daisies to stir the food coloring into the water

Arrange the three jars in the center of your table as a centerpiece.

This is our centerpiece right after placing the daises in water. The color had not saturated the petals yet

My daughters were excited to spot blue on the daises within hours

Patiently wait and watch for the petals to change color. Color will begin to show in the petals within a few hours, and it can take up to a week for full color change to occur.
- In our experience, the outer edges show the darkest saturation, and the rest of the petal has a light color change. The daisies adsorbed the blue food coloring a lot better than red. Our daisy petals never fully changed color after a week.
- Tips to accelerate color change: type of flower used (roses show color fastest, followed by carnations, then daisies), length of the stem (shorter stems = color shows faster), amount of food coloring used (more food coloring = more color change).
- Replace the water with fresh water every few days to keep the flowers looking fresh.

Our daises hadn’t changed color very much after 3 days, so we added more food coloring and cut the stems shorter and then we saw a much quicker and more dramatic color change.

Enjoy your colorful holiday centerpiece!

STEAM Concepts Learned:

Plants seem to defy gravity by moving the water upward from the roots to flowers, this is called capillary action. When the plants are cut (like the flowers used in this activity), they can absorb the water through their stem. Transpiration (the evaporation of water from the surface of the plant) creates negative pressure at the top of the plant. This negative pressure causes the xylem to pull water from the roots or stem to its stem, leaves, and flower.

Several other forces help make the capillary action possible. These are adhesion between water the the xylem plant molecules, and cohesion which is the attraction of water molecules to each other. All these forces combine to pull the water from the roots or stem and disperse it throughout the entire plant, all the way to the leaves and flowers.

This is why the colored water changes the color of the petals of our flowers in this experiment. The color only changes the tips of the petals because the water is not absorbed through the whole petal at once, so the color stains wherever the water travels in the petals.

My kids loved this activity when we first did it 6 years ago, and they still enjoyed it now. My older two kids were toddlers (like my youngest is now) when we first did the activity, and that is a great age for his activity. Toddlers love to touch the flowers, check on them every few hours, and they get so excited when they see color begin to show on the petals.

I was happy to see that my older kids got just as excited about the color change as my toddler. My older two kids (now age 10 and 8) also loved checking on the flowers several times a day looking for more color on the petals. They would look very closely to spot the early signs of color that my toddler didn’t notice.

Since my whole family loved this activity, I think it might become our new tradition every holiday! It makes such an easy and beautiful centerpiece, and kids love to watch the color saturate the flowers. Even though our daisies didn’t adsorb a lot of color, I still love the way they look on our table!

Have you tried this activity yet? Are you going to make this holiday centerpiece now after reading this post? Let us know what holiday you try this for and what colors you use!