A Budding Group of Scientists

I think we can all agree, we have had a fantastic week beginning our first science unit! The science curriculum is based on experimental philosophy and gives the children a chance to explore, observe, wonder, predict, investigate and record information. We begin with a biology unit on plants! This week, we focused primarily on the parts of the plant and what a plant needs to grow. To begin, working in table teams, each group learned about one part of the plant and then worked together to create a poster to share their learning with the rest of the class.

Leaves!

Stem!

Roots!

Seeds!

Flowers!

After learning the function of each plant part, they were put to a challenge: could they eat a WHOLE plant?!?! After a lot of predicting and questioning ("Even the roots?", "Will it make me sick?"), they were happy to learn that they could actually buy each part of the plant at any old grocery store! Then the predictions began again as they tried to predict which vegetables were from each part!

 I was impressed by their willingness to act in the name of science. One child even proudly claimed: "I HATE celery, but I'm going to eat it for the experiment and to say that I ate a WHOLE plant!" :)

After becoming experts on the parts of a plant, we watched The Magic School Bus: Gets Planted to learn more about what a plant needs to grow. With all this new knowledge, they were ready to test our their thumbs, and plant some seeds! Their greenhouses are proudly adorning our windows as our scientists now begin the observing and recording phase. When will their seeds sprout??? Tune in for updates!!

For some extension activities:
    -Growing Plants: Site for kids to virtually experiment and see how different variables affect the growth of a plant
    -Magic School Bus: Goes to Seed (video): They loved the Magic School Bus: Gets Planted video; this episode shows how seeds are created, transported, and turned into a plant

Clearly, we've been a bunch of busy owls here in Room 19! I look forward to seeing you all next week at Curriculum Night. This will be a great opportunity for me to tell you a little bit more about the second grade curriculum and to show off some of their hard work!