Friday, February 17, 2012

We love Spanish with Ms. Diana!

Planting Our Seeds

We had a wonderful time planting seeds this week! We got to choose between vegetable or flower seeds. After writing out the steps to follow, we got to work planting. Then, we made labels for our pots so that we'd remember what we'd planted. We are also excited to see which plants sprout first.

Thursday, February 9, 2012

Our Green World: Dissecting a Seed

This week, we started a unit study about plants called "Our Green World". On Monday, we started our K-W-L chart to tell what we Know about plants. We sure do know a lot already! We know that they need sun and water to grow. We know that they grow from seeds. We know that plants can make flowers, but not all plants do. We know that they grow from seeds. We also know that some plants can be eaten! Today, we dissected a lima bean seed. We soaked the seeds overnight in a cup of water to soften them. Then, we read a story about a boy who wears an interesting coat. He says he's hiding something under the coat and gives the clue that he keeps the same thing under his coat that a seed keeps under its coat. To solve the riddle, the class had to figure out what a seed keeps under its coat. We removed the seed coat and split the seed in half to find the embryo, or baby plant, inside the seed. It was interesting to discover which part would be the root and which part would be the seed. Then we learned that the cotyledons were actually food for the plant to grow until it could make it's own food from the sun. We went back to the story and realized that our guesses were right...the boy had food under his coat, just like a seed does! Here are a few photos of our budding scientists at work.

Monday, February 6, 2012

Happy 100 Days!

Can't you believe we've been in school this long already? We had a great time celebrating this special day!