ALuv just finished a unit on plants. He was very interested in this unit, which made it fun to teach! I wanted to post about some of our reading and writing activities.
PARTS OF A PLANT
Trees
We began our study with trees, since we have so many in our yard and he enjoys climbing them so much. We talked about the parts of a tree and he even made his own “riddle lap book” of sorts, which I posted about a couple of weeks ago.
We read some great tree books including, Our Very Own Tree, A Tree is Nice, Be a Friend to Trees, and Tell Me, Tree.
Exploring Tops & Bottoms with Plants
We moved a little deeper into learning about a plant’s parts by reading Tops & Bottoms (one of my all-time favorite books.)
I have these hand-drawn pictures of the food that hare planted in the book, which brings the story to life and really helps with comprehension.
ALuv enjoyed manipulating them on our dry erase board. I even “caught” him re-reading the book later that day.
Stem Investigation
We did a celery science experiment. I found through my research that blue food dye works the best, so that’s what we used.
I had him hypothesize what he thought would happen to the celery on this chart.
The next day, he recorded his findings on the right side of chart.
Making Observations in Nature
We went outside to explore plant parts further.
One afternoon, my hubby dug up some “baby trees” (seedlings) in our woods. ALuv was very interested in how the acorn had sprouted roots.
Drawing & Writing about Plant Parts
As we learned about the parts of the plant and what they do, he made this plant part flip chart. I love this little flip chart. It can be modified for so many uses!
SEEDS
Growing a Lima Bean
To start off this part of the unit, I bought some dried lima beans from the store. I soaked a few overnight and we were able to open them up and look at the “baby plant” growing inside. After exploring the lima bean, we read The Empty Pot (another favorite).
To test the idea of cooked seeds not being able to grow, ALuv and I started another science experiment. We cooked 3 beans by boiling them (in the microwave) and left 3 beans uncooked.
He wet two folded paper towels and placed the cooked beans on one and the uncooked beans on the other.
We labeled bags and placed the beans in them, then taped them to our schoolroom sliding glass window.
He kept a daily journal as we watched the seeds grow (of course, the cooked seeds did not grow). As we were waiting on our seeds, we read more seed books: From Seed to Plant & How a Seed Grows.
By day 9, the cooked beans were decaying and actually had a very unpleasant odor. The uncooked beans were sprouting roots like crazy!
Daddy and ALuv planted the beans into cups with dirt to go outside. Unfortunately, animals got into our beans, so we never got to see them grow! ALuv was disappointed and asked if we could try it again. Maybe this summer..
How Seeds Move
We read What Kind of Seeds are These? and The Tiny Seed, then went on a seed hunt in our own yard.
He found dandelion seeds
“helicopters” (from our maple tree)
and acorns. We brought them inside and “dissected” them, looking at them under a magnifying glass.
We discussed how each of the seeds we found moves from place to place. He drew and wrote about it.
Wrapping Up
He finished up our unit by writing and “publishing” a piggyback story (as I call them) from the books The Enormous Turnip and The Enormous Watermelon. This took me back to my days as a classroom teacher doing Writer’s Workshop! What fun!
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Thanks and God bless,
~Becky
ALuv made me a sweet homemade “card” (poster-sized) for Mother’s Day this year. It was so precious to me because he initiated the whole thing. He even taped a leftover pencil from Valentine’s Day on it.
I was getting ready for bed and glanced over at it and for some reason the words “to mom” hit me in my spirit. I’m “mom”. Not just “a mom”. God has let me borrow these four little ones. Me. Not anyone else. I’m the only one that gets the honor of being called “mom” for these precious babies.
Puzzle Racing
