Kindergarteners Investigate How Seeds Grow!

Kindergarten has explored what animals need to survive - food, water, air and a place to live.  Now we are investigating the needs of plants with two growing experiments.

The first is discovering if plants really need water to grow.  Each kindergartener put a garlic clove in a cup. Half the garlic cloves received water and the other half did not.  Next, they recorded their observations.

We had some predictions. The garlic with no water will get smaller.

What will happen?

A week later this is what we discovered...plants do need water to grow!

The garlic with no water didn't grow and has brown spots!

Look at the roots!

The stem is light green.

The garlic in water is so big!

We drew our observations.

Our second experiment is to investigate whether seeds need light to grow! 

We made signs with our name on it so we would
know which plant was ours.

Each person in the group planted 3 radish seeds.

Now to water the seeds!

Now that our seeds are planted, it's time to see if a plant really needs light to grow.  We placed half the plants in the grow lab and placed the other half of the plants in a covered box that receives no light. 

What will they look like next science class?

Kindergarten and the Flower Experiment!

Kindergarten has looked at all the parts of the tree and know how each part helps the tree to survive.  We were curious to know if the water really does go from the roots of the plant all the way up to the top!

We decided to put food coloring in a jar of water with a daisy in it and see what the flower looked like the next science class.

We looked closely at the flower before we drew it.

One class voted for red water.

Everyone drew the flower in the vase as it looked -
the water was very dark.

The bottom of the stem started to change color right away.

One class decided to split the stem and put one half in plain
water and the other half in blue water.

We made predictions about what we thought the flower would look like the next science class: the petals will be blue (or red or rainbow depending on the food coloring used), the stem will be the color of the water, the flower will grow, the water is going to disappear.

One week later...the flower petals turned blue!

The flower in the water with the red food
coloring didn't turn very red.  It was pink.

The underside of the petals have red lines on them.

The flower is so droopy!

This flower was a surprise!  The class put in red, blue, green
and yellow food coloring into the water.  The petals show all the
colors but in different locations on the petals!

Another droopy flower, but the side of the flower with the stem
 in plain water remained white, while the side of the flower with the
 stem in the blue water turned blue!

Kindergarten Wonders....How do Plants get Water to the Leaves and Flowers?

For the past month, kindergartners have been exploring the various parts of the tree.  Recently we wondered if trees really do bring water all the way up their stem to the top of the tree!  So we tried an experiment.

The Daisies before we started our experiment.

Each class voted on what color of food
coloring they wanted to add to the water.

Green water!

Blue was a popular color!

"The middle is the pollen."

We made some predictions about what the flowers would look like a week later. "Maybe they would be die because the water isn't normal." "The leaves and pedals might be blue." "The plant will grow roots." "The flower will be very brown and sick because it's been a week."

There is brown in the center of the flower.

"We were right! The petals turned blue!"

It doesn't smell that good.

The stem is blue too.

And now to record our observations.