Showing posts with label garden. Show all posts
Showing posts with label garden. Show all posts
Parts of a Plant

Parts of a Plant


It's that time of year when we're all excited about Spring! Birds are chirping, flowers are blooming, and we're learning about plants! This year my class did a fun and EASY activity while studying plant parts and functions. Best of all...you probably have everything you need in your classroom!



We first read several books and learned about the parts of a plant and their jobs throughout the week. As a culminating activity, we created our watercolor plants and added captions for each plant part.

For the first step, we started with a directed drawing of the ground, the stem, the roots, and the leaves. I illustrated this, and they drew what I drew.



I then let the kids look up photos of flowers in books or on EPIC (using their ipads.)
This way, we would have lots of original flowers!
They then drew their flower and outlined  the whole picture in black crayon.



 The next step is painting with watercolors. The black crayon helps keep the watercolors from spreading and also helps define the different spaces.



After the paint has completely dried,
we cut out the pictures and glued them on blue construction paper.

While some kids were painting, the other kids started writing their captions on labels. They first wrote the captions in pencil and then went over their words in black marker. They completely came up with their descriptions on their own. I love this because they're all different!



The final steps were to add the labels to the blue paper and add the title.





If you'd like to read more about our plants unit, check out this previous blog post. Have a great week!
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We Heart Teaching
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This Week: Outdoor Fun and Exploring Soil!

This Week: Outdoor Fun and Exploring Soil!


We are super-lucky to have some great outdoor opportunities at our school that provide hands-on learning for our kiddos. We have a garden and a chicken coop, and we recently welcomed 4 goats! Austin weather has been beautiful lately, so we took advantage of the sunshine and spent some time outside.

The beautiful weather came at a perfect time because we also started our "Life in the Garden" unit. We began the unit by learning about soil. We learned about the different layers and what they're composed of.
 
We started  by exploring soil using our senses. The students used masking tape to grab a soil sample and then described it.
 
We then did an experiment where we combined soil and water in a jar and predicted what would happen overnight. They were surprised to find out that the soil settled into layers!
 
 
 
We also learned about what the different layers were made of.
 

 
  
We ended the week with a little seed/soil predicting. We planted lima beans in three types of soil and predicted which we thought would grow the fastest.
{Fingers crossed we see some growth before Spring Break!}
 
Next week we'll learn about seeds, the parts of a plant, and the plant life cycle. Exciting stuff! All of  this {and more} is available in my new unit!
http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Life-in-the-Garden-Soil-Seeds-and-Plants-1151435 
(Click on the pic to go to my TPT store)

 
 
 
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We Heart Teaching
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