WHY? My daughter once asked me why there were more yellow flowers than white. To be honest I’d never even noticed! But, yes, she was right. When I looked around there were more yellow flowers. Why? I hadn’t a clue so I threw back the question! “I don’t know. Why do you think it is?” Young children are SO much better than us at answering their own difficult questions! Back came the answer, ‘Maybe it’s because the bees prefer yellow flowers?’ A pretty good hypothesis to start with. So from there we got into a conversation about what the bees were doing on the flowers and was it just bees or did other insects visit flowers and why? Then of course came an even more difficult question! “But how can we find out?” Well, by then it was getting rather near to tea time and my mind wasn’t really on bees and flowers. But daughter being very persistent would not let it go! To cut a long story short she decided to test out her colour theory by placing clear plastic dishes with a sugar solution on a selection of different coloured card. Then I got on with making the tea while she sat there like a statue counting how many insects visited the different coloured ‘flowers’! The result? Was her prediction correct? Try it and see!
Creative Learning for Young Children 