How make make our own clothes dye from food?

Here's a fun and creative way of incorporating food into your classrooms without eating it!

Curricular area - Social Sciences, Science

Skills - Problem Solving

This activity involves using real foods to create different colours of dye, a creative way of combining science with social studies if you are looking at how the Celts or the Vikings lived.

Process:

Step 1: The children would work in groups of 4 or five and each have a fruit or vegetable (or portion of) to cut into small pieces. The transferable skill here would be chopping the food safely which would be modelled and supervised by the class teacher. Once the children have chopped the food they will place it a pot, making sure it is only one type of fruit of vegetable in each pot (there may be four or five groups with different foods). The children would then have to measure twice as much water in volume, as the food and add this to the pot. This part of the lesson will provoke an element in problem solving as there is no teacher led specific method given as to how to do this in order for the children to ‘work this out’ for themselves. This will allow children to build on their previous knowledge and deepen their own learning as they are learning through the process.

Step 2: Once the pot with the water has been placed on the hot plate (supervised by the teacher) or cooker – whichever is available in the school, the water should be brought to a boil and then left to simmer for an hour. At this part of the process you may want to

Step 3: In pairs, taking turns, the children should pour the cooled mixture through a strainer and into a second large pot then discard the fruit or vegetable material in the strainer (you could put this in a compost pile, see activity 6). This liquid dye should be set aside in the second pot until Step 6.

Step 4: Place your cotton fabric (ideally a t-shirt) in a large pot. Add four parts water to one part vinegar to the pot, using enough liquid so that the fabric is covered. This will create a dye fixative. Simmer the cotton in the fixative for one hour.

Step 5: Allow the pot to cool before pouring off the fixative and rinsing the fabric thoroughly with water. Squeeze out excess water from the cotton but do not dry the material.

Step 6: Place your cotton material into your dye liquid from Step 3. Simmer the liquid lightly for up to an hour or more. One person from the group can check the fabric every 10 – 20 minutes to see the progress of the dying.

Step 7: Stop simmering and let the pot cool once the desired colour is reached. Remove the fabric, squeeze out the excess liquid and hang up to dry. For variety you could leave one or two groups’ fabric in overnight to create a stronger dye. 

Don't have the facilities to do this? Try using food colourings or coffee to make a simpler version of dying your own clothes.