Daily Archives: June 5, 2018

Pollination

This Friday, we conducted  some experiments on pollination.  My hope was that the children would have a better understanding of how seed dispersers share seeds, pollen and drink some much loved nectar.  This was a perfect lesson to illustrate that.  The children had constructed a flower, and two pollinators.  Those pollinators then had to dip into the pollen, which they quickly shared with another flower.

  

Audobon

Wow.  Another big thank you to the PTA for sponsoring a visit to us from the Audubon Society.  Ms. Hilary had some pretty great lessons for us, regarding seed dispersal.  We started our lesson inside, but shortly thereafter, we continued outside to collect some data on seed dispersers.  The children had a lot of fun with all of the hand-on elements of these lessons.

Planting

We also did a little bit of planting, of grass seed, to learn about the basic needs of plants, and to further investigate seed dispersal.  The kids had some very rich conversations on what they already knew about plans.  We discussed decomposing, composting, and many other elements of plants.  We are excited, and hopeful that our plants will start to grow.

Beans

We spent a few days last week, talking about plants, and their functions.  We did some experimenting with beans.  In conversing with the children about what they knew about plants, there appeared to be some misconceptions, in whether or not a plant needed soil in order to survive.

We started with dry seeds, measured, observed and made some predictions about what we thought the inside looked like.  After soaking some beans overnight, we were able to split them open and investigate the inside.  The children had a lot of fun with this, and seemed genuinely excited when they learned what the inside looked like.  They were careful scientists during this lesson.

For the second part of our lesson, we decided to experiment as to whether we could make a plant grow without soil.  The children “planted” a couple of seed in a bag with a moistened paper towel.  We then hung them on the window, to give them as much sunlight as possible.  We are excited to observe and track our findings.