Fun With Plants!

This post is a week or so overdue, but I figured I would share it anyway :) We learned all about plants, something I always love to teach! I love that it can easily be extended with apples and pumpkins!

I really like the way our science book teaches plants, and I was able to make a plant journal to accompany it! It would work for anyone, even if you did not have the same science series as we do :) You can pick up a copy for cheap HERE or by clicking the preview picture below: 

 

 

As we came to new vocabulary words in our books, we added them onto the leaves on our bulletin board:

 

 

 

Plant Experiment:

We started our plant unit by being scientists. We decided to do a little experiment to see which plant would grow the best {and to learn what plants need!} I bought a 6 pack Dianthus plants from Lowe's and cut them apart. {Be sure you pick a plant that needs lots of sun!}We gave Plant 1 only sun, Plant 2 only water {we kept it under a dark can}, and Plant 3 got sun AND water. The kids made predictions about which plant would grow best and why. The kids observed the plants everyday and wrote their observations in their plant journals {there is a section at the bottom of each page in the journal for observations!} Here is how our plants ended up after about a week and a half or so...

 

 

 

 

**Be sure if you do this experiment that you let the kids hold each plant! Plant 1 became SUPER light, and Plant 2 became SUPER heavy because of all the water :) It lead to a great discussion!**

 

Day 1:
We discussed our schema and what we want to know about plants. We also made experiment predictions.

 

Day 2:

We read about, discussed, drew and labeled what plants need.

 

Day 3:
We read about, discussed, drew and labeled the parts of a plant.

 

Day 4:

We read about, discussed, drew and labeled the life cycle of a plant.

 

Day 5:

We read about, discussed, and wrote about why plants are important in our lives.

Day 6:

Made these cute flowers to show 5 facts we learned about plants:

 

 

Last week we finished our Apple Week. We did pretty much the same things we did last year {no time to photograph or blog about it this year because of Parent/Teacher Conferences!} The next couple weeks we will work on our pumpkin unit! I am so excited!