Cabbage Science

Today we experimented with purple cabbage. What a cool vegetable! That's right, I just called cabbage "cool", and soon you will too!

I plopped this bugger into the middle of the table surrounded by eager to learn 2-4 year olds. I asked them to tell me about it. Some of their observations were:
- Its purple
-It smells like broccoli
-It is white
- It has a pattern! Purple, white, purple, white...
- Its a circle! Its a sphere!
- It comes apart. Its made of leaves!

So many amazing topics to cover! We could have spent a lot longer talking about it, they had so much to contribute. I gave one child a piece of the cabbage and asked her how to get the colour out. She tried drawing with it like a crayon, breaking it apart, and swishing it around in cold water. No luck.

 I pulled out the water that I had boiled the other half of the cabbage in:

The first jar contains water that was taken out after one minute of boiling, the second after 5 minutes and the third after 10 minutes. 

The kids loved holding the jars up to the window to see the colours light up. We talked about the differences between the colours. And which one everyone liked the most. 

Next I took some water from the first jar and put it in a glass dish:

And added vinegar!

What happens? It turns PINK!

Next we added a scoop of baking soda:

It fizzed up and then it turned purple... then when they mixed it...

We got dark blue!

We found that the darker colours changed just the same. We got all sorts of beautiful colours! 

After the demo, the kids were each given their own cabbage water, vinegar, and baking soda to experiment with. The little scientists had a great time experimenting with the effects. 

Their conclusion: Cabbage is pretty cool! They even asked for some for lunch!