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)

              

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FREE Addition Tables Booklets!

Fresh from the grill!  I made these for son, to be used in our addition exercises.  We're using Book 1 as of the moment. 

The pdfs are set in booklet format, and I added page numbers as a guide.   You can also cut each tables if you do not wish to use it as a booklet.

Inside, this is how they  look like:

Addition Tables Book 1

Addition Tables Book 2

Addition Tables Book 3

If you have problem with the links, please let me know.  Hope you like it.  Enjoy!

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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.

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Botany Bundle Pack

 

My Botany Bundle Pack is finally up!  It contains the following pack (3-part cards and booklets):

• The Plant
• The Tree
• The Leaf
• The Flower
• The Seed

You will save $2 if you purchase the bundle.

My son is loving our materials.  We started using them already last week  and we're wrapping our "plant" study before we move on to the "tree". 

Happy Sunday to all!

Botany Lessons

I mentioned in my previous post that we're doing Botany this month :)  I've been waiting for a "summer" weather for this unit so we could do lots of outdoor learning and mother nature has finally heard my prayer. 

Anyway, here's what we're going to have this month:

• plant
• tree
• leaf
• seed
• flower (not in the picture because I run out of green cardstock)

 

Nomenclature and Booklets

Yesterday we also had our "Tree Shapes" study. 

 

And used our Tree Shapes nomenclature/matching cards.  For more information about this file, click here or the picture for the link.

My son brought his sunflower plant which they planted in school and I placed it in our window so he can easily tend it.  I placed a sprinkler so he can water it anytime of the day and added books on the side for reading.

Plants need sunlight and water

 

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Tree Shapes

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 this weekend as we visit the park.  This is an activity sheet that is included in the printable material. 

It was fun! My son loved checking out the trees and guessing whether they are weeping, columnar, vase, globe etc.

Also included in my file are 39 picture cards for tree shape sorting and nomenclature/matching cards.  (Click the picture for the file's link)

 

Now that he's familiar with the shapes, whenever we're out he would keep on eyeing trees and identify their shapes LOL.

More of these soon!

Sifting and Discovering Gems!

This is one activity my son truly enjoyed :)  We never had "practical life" activities for quite a while and I was thinking to re-introduce some of it.

                

For this activity, I poured some flour on a bowl and added some gemstones we got from a recent trip to a leisure park.  Then I gave him a sifter to uncover all those precious gems!

                

And it is also a good practice in math! Try counting how many gems you discovered :) 

You can also use sand instead of flour and beads, letters, numbers or objects instead of the gems.

Try it! You're kids will looove it!

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