Plants, Plants, Baby

4th grade seems to really step up the Plant Unit game and gets deeper into vascular/nonvascular, plant parts, and photosynthesis. Yikes! Luckily, I had these activities on hand to help me break it down for the kiddos.

5 days of lesson plans with all materials, objectives, and steps laid out and ready for me! 

This slideshow laid out everything simply for everyone to understand...plus it comes with a handout for students to fill out notes. 

Each day ends with an interactive notebook activity so they could practice what we learned about.

Anchor charts also helped us organize the differences in vascular and nonvascular plants...NEW vocabulary for 4th graders!!

We're also able to do a fun and easy science lab to see how vascular plants use stems to "drink" water...thank you blue food coloring!

We'll get to review with a Magic School Bus viewing that has comprehension questions before we take the unit test to wrap everything up.

Whew!! It's a lot to pack into one unit but we'll be plant experts by the end of it! See more of this unit by clicking HERE!

Soil & Such

I'll admit-I'm not the best at incorporating super interesting and engaging science lessons into our day. I hate to say it, especially since my mom is the best 5th grade science teacher ever! (sorry, mom) For a couple of weeks, we dug deep into soil (see what I did there?) and got a little hands-on!

First, we talked about the life cycle of a plant. We specifically looked at a pumpkin because our weekly story from our reading series was titled "The Life Cycle of a Pumpkin". I wish we could read this story in the Fall, but oh well!

1.We sequenced the life cycle of a pumpkin with this cut and paste:

2. After a week of life cycles, our next story from our reading series was titled "Soil", a nonfiction explanation about what soil is and why it is important. 

We studied soil by observing how it felt, smelled, looked, and decided if it would be good for a plant. (sorry, no pictures) Once we decided it was good, we began the planting process!

3. Before we could plant, we observed the different seeds we would be planting with our 5 senses. And we got to use awesome science tools (there you go, mom). The 4 seeds we looked at were bean, sunflower, pumpkin, and pea. 

4. After we observed and recorded and got all scientific, we FINALLY got to plant! Each table had a different seed to plant. 4 different types of seeds = 4 different table groups. Perfect!

5. Now, EAT IT!

Just kidding. I made dirt cake as a little treat to wrap up our soil unit. I almost had them convinced I dug it out of the ground. :) YUM!

Our little plants are sitting by the window soaking up what little sun is shining and are well watered. Hopefully, I will have some little sprouts to report soon!