In addition to Halloween and Pumpkin activities, we were also doing a unit on plants. During our first week, we learned all about the parts of the plant! We read several books on the parts of the plant. These books gave us a lot of great information about what each part does for the plant:
In their science journal, they filled in a web with the different parts of the plant and illustrated them. They also worked on their Parts of the Plant book
where each day (after reading a book on one part of the plant) they would write what that part did for the plant and colored that part on the plant.
That week was also the Science Fair so I decided to do our project on plants. Each class in the school does a project so every kid will have a project at the fair to show their parents. Students can also do their own individual projects but that is optional. Since I have my kids for
kindergarten and 1st, I usually do a classification or investigation in
Kinder and an experiment in 1st. We did our project on the parts of the
plant where we took a plant walk around our school and took pictures of different parts of the plant we found.We also wrote about what each part of the plant does for the plant.
The same day as the Science Fair, we also took a field trip to a Christmas Tree Farm/Pumpkin Patch where the kids learned all about the life cycle of a pumpkin plant. The kids first predicted what they would see:
(trees and pumpkins)
(Christmas trees)
(pumpkins)
When we got back, the kids filled in a scavenger hunt checklist by marking off everything we had seen. We actually saw everything on the list except a cow!
Finally, the kids wrote about what they had learned there. I was amazed at how well they observed and listened! Most of them wrote about the "girl flower" and "boy flower" on a pumpkin plant and how they need each other in order to make a pumpkin.
(I learned if the girl flower doesn't get pollen it will die)
(I learned there is a boy flower on a pumpkin.)
(I learned that there is a girl flower and a boy flower.)
During the second week, we focused more on the life cycle of a plant. My kids' favorite saying right now is "A life cycle goes on and on and on...." We read several life cycle books including "Seed to Sunflower" and "From Seed to a Pumpkin"
In their Science journals, the kids filled in a web on pumpkins where they drew pictures to show what they had learned about pumpkins over the past few weeks.
The kids also colored a "What Plants Need" book where they filled in what plants need to live and illustrated a picture of a plant:
On our last day of our plant unit, the kids did an easy plant craft where they made a flower and labeled the parts of the plant. If you'd like a copy of this craft, download it for free
HERE on my TpT site. They turned out so cute!
If you liked these activities make sure to check out my
plant unit and
pumpkin unit on TpT!
