Botany Unit: Plant Life Cycle and Photosynthesis

PHOTOSYNTHESIS

To wrap up our Plant Study, we looked into the process of Photosynthesis.  We talked about the source of light, the water and the carbon dioxide that the plant needed to produce oxygen.

I printed a few worksheets from Education.com for him to work on.      

Here's a helpful animation about Photosynthesis.

LIFE CYCLE OF A PLANT

Another worksheet from Education.com, here ordering the stages of a plant's life.

               

 EXPERIMENT

To see how the fluids move inside the plant, we did a little experiment.  We put some stalks of celery into a glass of water containing a blue food coloring.

              

The results as of Day 1.  The leaves and the tip of the stalks have blue spots and the leaves turned into blue.  That's because the blue water has been transported around the plants :)  I love how visible the blue pigments are in the leaves!  (You can click the pictures for a much bigger image)

              

Linking to:

Montessori Monday
TGIF Linky Party
Teach Beside Me
Preschool Corner
Spring Carnival

FREE Addition Table Booklets

I made these for my son for use in our addition exercises.  We're currently using Book 1.

Botany Unit: The Plant

Last week's activity:  The Plant  (my son is obsessed with Legos and he made a Lego plant similar to our cards LOL)

This is how I store my nomenclature cards.  Nothing fancy, just a green cardstock (Green for Botany)  and divided it into three sections.  I measured the width and height of the cards to make sure they fit well in each pocket.

First we read books. I started discussing how does a plant grow, what does it do and it's essential role on our environment.

Then I took out our materials.  This sunflower plant is from his school.  It's a perfect model for our study.

Next thing, we talk about the different parts of the plant.  As seen here, he's working on the parts of the plant nomenclature cards.

We also have blank labeling card worksheets.  He colors each part of the plant and writes the label/s on it.  He loved this!

                

Because I run out of felt, I wasn't able to prepare a poor man's version of a plant puzzle.  So instead I have him make a plant out of colored papers.  He did most of the work here.  All I did was to draw the outlines on the paper and assist him in cutting the parts.

  This is how it looks like when he was done.  I read the booklet to define each parts as he formed his plant.

 

If you may ask, all materials seen here (nomenclature, worksheet and booklet) are all in one file (click the  picture for the link).

 

And because he can't get enough of what he has learned, he collected these on our way home from school. 

Next post is all about photosynthesis and plant life cycle.

Linking to:

Montessori Monday
TGIF Linky Party
Teach Beside Me
Preschool Corner
Spring Carnival

Tree Shapes Outdoor Activity (Worksheet and Printable)

Because of the wonderful weather, I decided to throw a Botany Unit for this month.  We've got plenty of trees around the estate, all with different shapes so I was thinking that we should jump-start our Botany lessons with Tree Shapes.

So I made him a learning material that would help us identify the tree shapes in our estate... and hopefully use it this weekend as we visit the park.  This is an activity sheet that is included in the printable material, Tree Shapes.  We've also brought along our green do-a-dot marker with our worksheet.