Plant dye

Preparing for plant dying experiment
Jeffrey's carrot juice spit.
investigating the veggies/fruits
Dying yarn with natural food dye 
Extracted vegetable dye






The children wondered about how the colours get into our clothes.  Orin said we buy clothes at the store and they colour it there. I shared my experience with plant dye when I went on a hiking trip in Peru.  There I saw and experienced how the locals would use natural plants and even dried insects to dye fabric.  I showed them pictures of my trip and they were amazed by the colourful fabric and most of all the llamas and alpacas where they get they get their wool.  We also watched a video from National Geographic to show how this process of dying is done in that region.

It would have been fun to gather wild plants from our forest like Oregon grapes and but I was told we are not actually allowed to do that.  So I went to the store and got a few vegetables and fruits to use for our plant dying experiment.  They took turns investigating the fruit/veggie using their five senses.  At first they were reluctant to try them out but their curiosity took over and they became more  open-minded about smelling and even tasting.  Using a chart to record our observations, we predicted what colour we might extract from each and then compared the results after.  The children did some yarn dying and weaving using variety of coloured yarn.



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