Seeds, Roots, and Stems

In order to avoid overly long posts, the last two weeks of science get their own post separate from history.

We started our botany unit with seeds. Besides reading many books (of course) we also dissected a Lima bean. We found the hard coat, food source, the embryonic roots, stem, and leaves. I also a had a little diagram for them to fill in and color so they could label and recognize all the seed parts. This activity was really interesting, really fun, and really effective. They dissected a LOT of lima beans. I soaked the beans in water first over night to that the hard coats would slip off the beans and they would be easier to pop open.

Also, we went outside to look for seeds. We first found the dandelion seeds (sigh) since they technically aren't really hiding out in my lawn, are they? But then we found a walnut, a pine cone (most of the seeds had been eaten by birds, but we did find one,) a bunch of seeds from an elm(?) tree, some maple tree seeds (the little helicopters) some bean pods and seeds from whatever that other tree is in our front yard, and we even found a maple tree seed that had started germinating in a crack in our driveway. That was a really remarkable find! I had the kids sketch each seed that we found so that we could see how different seeds can look.

The kids picked these seeds off the elm tree and pretended they were raining on me and Kaleb.

Later we planted a bunch of our flower seeds. I've got most of the vegetable starts going (and 8 of them in the ground outside) so it was time to start the flowers. I've planted marigolds, Abigail chose Candytufts, Lukas picked out Lavendar, and I can't remember what Joshua picked, something common but not terribly popular.  Again, we paid special attention to how all the seeds looked different and were even different sizes.

The biggest is the lima bean we dissected and the smaller bean was for our sprouting activity. The other four are the flower seeds we planted.

And lastly for seeds (actually we did this on the first day) we planted little string beans in plastic bags with moist paper towels to be able to actually watch them germinate. Joshua's started soaking up the water first and mine and Abigail's didn't seem to be doing much, but in the end, Joshua's just turned to mush, Abigail's never germinated, and mine began to grow!

The first activity we did for roots and stems had more to do with stems. We gave celery some colored water and observed what happened. After 4 hours the leaves were colored pretty well. Overnight the leaves darkened and so did the veins of the celery.

We learned from one of our root books that potatoes are actually a stem, not a root, but we planted one anyway. No results yet.

 Sweet Potatoes are still roots, though, so we planted some of those too. Our SP are looking a little fuzzing under the water on the window side. I'm not sure if that is the beginning of something friendly growing... or unfriendly. I had to warn the kids that grocers often spray their produce with growth retardant, so we might not get any growth, and even if we do, it might be limited. But we thought we'd try anyway.

And one day as we were transplanted tomato starts outside we happened to come upon a root in our way. So Derek took the hatchet and chopped it out of the ground for us, a portion of it at least. We examined the difference between a root and a branch.

 If you were able to zoom up close on this photo you would be able to see the tiny tubes in the root that suck the water up towards the stem. It was really neat to actually look inside a root.!

And lastly, that I remember, I had the children memorize a poem about seeds (sort of) and part of Joshua's handwriting for the stem/root week was to copy the following poem about roots. Actually, he copied both for his copywork, but we didn't work on memorizing the root poem.

Planting

I took a little seed one day
About a month ago.
I put it in a pot of dirt,
In hopes that it would grow.

I poured a little water
To make the soil right.
I set the pot upon the sill,
Where the sun would give it light.

I checked the pot most every day,
And turned it once or twice.
With a little care and water
I helped it grow so nice.

Dick Wilmes

A root of a plant,
  Must absorb water high,
From the ground, to the leaves,
So those leaves never dry...
They can do other things,
Work hard like an ant,
  They grow very strong,
Help support the whole plant...
They grow in the ground,
They grow in the mud...
They sprout from the seed,
Don't have any bud..
Don't produce flowers,
Not known to have leaves,
But store the plant's food,
Like hives do for bees...
Not bald like a baby,
Root hairs on their sides,
Roots are essential,
To help plants survive.