Budding Botanists

The class has done an absolutely fantastic job with our plant unit.  We started off learning about seeds.  We studied dry seeds and soaked seeds, and then we got to dissect the seeds to study the parts inside.  

We studied the inside of a seed. 

We then planted our Wisconsin Fast Plant seeds.  We did this very carefully because we knew that we needed them to grow so that we could study our plants' life cycles over the next 6 weeks.  The students did an amazing job following the multi-step directions to plant each seed perfectly.

Planting our seeds

Then we watered our plants and hoped for the best.  They started sprouting and we started observing.  The third grade scientists did a great job with their observations.  We practiced making an observation that leads to a question and then following that up with a prediction.  Ask your little scientist to share examples of how he or she did this in class.

Watering our plants and hoping they'll grow

So excited they started to sprout!

After our plants started growing, we transplanted some of them into new quads.  This gave the plants remaining in our quads more space and nutrients.  This also gave us a chance to study the roots of our plants.

They're growing!

Studying the roots

As our plants grew, we noticed some new shaped leaves growing.  We learned that these new true leaves were different from the first seed leaves.  We compared and contrasted them and made some predictions about what would happen next.

Comparing seed leaves to true leaves

We continued observing our plants as they made their way through their life cycle.  Check back after break to learn what we did during the next stages of our plants' life cycle.