All About Plants

Today we learned about plants. We did several worksheets, read a beginner level reader book together, conducted a science experiment, analyzed a leaf and made play dough prints with objects found in nature. It was pretty fun and Lilly learned quite a bit!

We started out with a little math on a fun bug worksheet. It's not plants but bugs and plants are related right? I really like the worksheet because it teaches how to subtract in an easy way that my daughter instantly understood. Kids also get a lot of satisfaction from marking out things so she really enjoyed herself. I found a leaf worksheet that is similar to the one we used and you can find it here at education.com.

After a little math we talked about what plants need to grow and sang a cute song. Then we discussed the parts of a plant and practiced writing the words for the different parts as well as doing a matching activity where we matched the word to the part of the plant. You can find the worksheets I used here at homeschoolcreations.com. We also discussed the life cycle of a plant and used this easy sequencing worksheet from teacherspayteachers. Both worksheets are free!

After discussing plants it was time for examining some. We went outside and looked at some of the plants in our backyard and collected a leaf from one of our hydrangea bushes for our next project, leaf rubbing! I used this free worksheet from teacherspayteachers. Lilly thought the rubbing was really neat and she loved measuring its length.  Then we collected more nature items like rocks, sticks and more leaves to play with making imprints in play dough. 

Our science experiment will require a little patience as it doesn't reveal the cool part until a couple of days have passed. But, we took three glasses of differently colored water (using food coloring) and placed a stalk of celery in each cup. After a few days the celery leaves and stem will take on a tint of the color that the water. You can explain what they should expect and then they can check each day to see if it has happened. You can use this experiment to explain how a plant uses water and soil to grow.

We ended the day with reading a beginning level reader about the life cycle of a plant. It was good because it re-used words and several of them focused on words with double "ee" like need and seed. I got it for free from ... you guessed it! Teacherspayteachers, they have a ton of free things as well as not so free and many of the worksheets I will be using for mommy camp came from there. You can get it here.

Tomorrow we will be focusing on nocturnal and diurnal animals and that will wrap up our camping unit! We were planning on finishing the week with an actual camping trip but good ole tropical storm Bill will be rolling through our neck of the woods this weekend so that might not happen yet. See you tomorrow!