Springtime means it’s time to learn about plants and living and non-living things. And that means we’re using our Plants Research Project which is full of plants lesson plans!
We will use our Plants research creation to research and write about plants!! During our plants unit, we will learn the parts of plants, plant life cycles, how we use plants, what plants need to grow, and how plants help people! We will also plant grass seeds and observe how our grass grows! Students will record their seed observations in their seed journals! However, before we start with plants, we study living and non-living things!
This research project contains suggested books, recording sheets for plants as well as all the materials needed to create your research journal and graphic organizers! We have also included rubrics to assess student writing.
Plants Lesson Plans: Living And Non-Living
Before we learn about plants, we do some investigation into living and non-living things. This sets us up to understand plants.
After learning what living and non-living things need, we explore living and non-living using earthworms and gummy worms. We measured each worm, described the worms, and decided if each was alive or not. Ya’ll, there’s nothing like the squeals and giggles when you get out the earthworms! (Note: no worms were harmed, and all were released outside after our lesson)
My students also did a scavenger hunt to find examples of living and non-living things. This is a great assessment to see if students can identify living/non-living and explain their thinking.
Plants Lesson Plans: Schema Map
As always, our research project kicks off and ends with a schema map. We add our schema on the first day of our research project. Before we learn about plants, the students share their schema or what they know about plants, and we record it on Post-It Notes. As we learn about plants, we add new learning and address misconceptions!
Plants Lesson Plans: Graphic Organizers
As we research and study plants, we record our learning on our class charts. We use tree charts, brace charts, true/false sorts for higher order thinking and labeling to learn about vocabulary and adaptations!
The students then record what they have learned in their very own Plant Research Journal!
Explicit vocabulary instruction is embedded into our research projects, but it’s also a focus when we label the parts of plants. Not only do we learn the vocabulary, we also discuss the function of each part of the plant and whether we can eat that part of the plant!
We also learn the life cycle of plants.
To assess the student’s writing, we also include writing rubrics in our research projects!
Plants Lesson Plans: Plant Science
To help us understand how the parts of a plant work, we do our rainbow flowers experiment! Use any white flowers (Carnations work best)! Snip off the stems and place the flowers in water that has food coloring added. Have students make predictions and draw what they think might happen. And then watch what happens! This is a great kick-off lesson for your plant research project! We always do this on day one so we can watch how our flowers change!
These are included in our Mad Science Creation!
We also make glow-in-the-dark flowers! All of the details for this experiment are in our Student Scientists In The Classroom SET 2!
Plant Art
Of course, we have to do art projects involving plants! And there are so many fun ideas!
First, we use art as an assessment tool. After studying plants, their parts, and their needs, the students create a plant poster and label the parts and needs of plants.
We also draw flowers, paint carrots, and use plants to paint pictures!
This is one of my ultimate favorite art projects! I LOVE feet painting projects because it’s hilarious to watch the kids giggle and squirm. And let’s face it, this is a pretty big bonding moment!
This is a celery painting! Cut the bottom off of the celery and dip it in paint. Stamp the flower onto the paper. Students then use their fingers to make stems!
Torn paper flowers are a fun way to decorate your hallway! I draw different types of flowers and give the kids paper. They tear paper and create different flowers!
We also make rainbow flowers!
Plants Lesson Plans: Eating Plants!
We learn that plants give us food. And we all love to eat, so of course, one of our plants lesson plans is that we learn about the parts of a plant that we eat! The kids are always shocked to learn that we eat all the plant parts!
Our first plant food activity is our Tops And Bottoms salad! We kick off our plant research project with the book Tops and Bottoms.
And then we make a salad of all the plants from the book Tops And Bottoms!
Our final project for our plant theme is to eat the parts of plants! I pass out the food to the students and have them sort the parts of plants. Then, we discuss each part and see if we can identify the parts of plants that we eat!
Tops And Bottoms Comprehension Activities
As part of our plant unit, we read Tops And Bottoms and worked on comprehension skills using our Read It Up creation.
Tops And Bottoms Sensory Bin
Here’s a fun and easy idea: bring some tops and bottoms fun into your sensory bin! Use pasta dyed green and orange to make the filler. Then add carrot tops and bottoms from our Carrot Sight Word game to make a sight word sensory bin! Students match the tops and bottoms of the carrots and write the words!
Plant Books
CLICK HERE TO SEE THE BOOKS ON AMAZON!
Plants Freebies!
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