We have had some really hot nor’west days this past week in Christchurch. I always drink a lot of water and trying to get my kids to drink lots of water on those hot days seems to be really easy. They recognise in their body that they need water to help them feel better and function well. My son often tells me that water makes us healthy – and he’s right! It also makes plants healthy too. We all need water to survive.
So when we went into the garden the other morning my 3 year old son pointed out one of the plants in the garden and said that it looked sad! I had a look at it and it did look sad, in a limp kind of way. We had a wee chat about why it looked like that and what it might need to make it feel better and ‘perk up’. We came to the conclusion that water would help so we got the hose and gave it a good soaking. But it didn’t perk up straight away, in fact it looked just the same. My son was a little confused which led to a conversation about dehydration and how long it might take for the plant to feel better after having its water. It was such a great learning opportunity and we turned it into a science experiment. We set the timer and checked on it every hour to see what had happened or what had changed. Were the leaves changing position, did they stay where they were, did the soil dry up more, should we put more water on, what did the flowers do? Our experiment took 5 hours in the end before the plant was back to its perky self! I was actually really surprised about the length of time it took. My son was really excited to see the plant happy and started telling some elaborate story about the leaves and the water and the monsters (apparently they helped the leaves feel better) and the airplane! Or course there is an airplane! Afterwards I asked him what he thought might happen to humans if they didn’t drink enough water? They would be sad was his answer! I will save the rest of that conversation for another day! This was a great observation that turned into a really neat learning opportunity for both of us. Check out the before and after photos below to see the transformation!
