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.