Pre-K Explores the World of Plants

Pre-K has started a new unit all about plants. Last week we planted a paperwhite bulb and made predictions about how many cubes high it will grow.

 

We also sorted seeds with tweezers!  Many of us wondered what type of plant the seed would grow into.

Everyone had fun "planting a garden"! First is the stem and leaf, next comes the flower and last the pollen. 

 We discovered the gardens can be connected together to make one BIG garden.

 

We made observations about another type of bulb: an amaryllis.  It is a bigger bulb than the paperwhite.  Some of the pollen fell onto the petals of the flower!

 

This week was the first time pre-k got to see the roly polies.  The little critters have finally gotten big enough to handle!
 

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?

Our Gorgeous Garden!

As summer kicks into gear, our garden is starting to show it's beauty!  They kids have done such a good job growing plants, watering, weeding and caring for the garden that it's not a surprise it looks so amazing!

The red basil was started in our wall farm in the
cafeteria. 

Lots of tomatoes!

Cantaloup and watermelon!

First strawberries!

Lettuce originally grown in the wall farm in
the cafeteria!

Tomatoes starting to grow!

A ladybug eating aphids!

A beautiful Question Mark butterfly.

A monarch visiting our milkweed!

A monarch egg!

A very small monarch caterpillar eating our milkweed!

 I can't wait to see how the garden looks in September!  Have a great summer!

Kindergarten Plants Corn Seeds and Watches them Grow!

Kindergarten has been busy investigating all parts of the tree!  We have looked at the trunk, leaves but wondered how can we look at the roots of the tree?

Well...we planted corn seeds during our gardening class...

First we made a sign for our seed...

So we will know which of the 140 plants is ours!

Then we put soil in the cup.

The cup has a hole in the bottom incase we
 water our plant a little too much!

Next we added about 4 corn kernels.

Sometimes some extra seeds get dropped in!

Cover the seeds and water!

Ready to grow!

It's too cold outside, so the seeds were brought inside...

And put in the grow lab in my classroom!

Two weeks later...our corn seeds have grown!  We first drew what our plant looked like and then, carefully and gently, we pulled our corn seedling out to look at the root structure.

You can see the roots growing from the seed!

There are so many roots!

My roots are so long!

We discussed how the roots help the plant get food and stay
in one place!

Lastly, we re-planted our corn seedling and should be making their way home to continue growing in your homes!