Kindergarten, Science, Week 17

This week we were supposed to identify one tree every day, Monday through Thursday, but the week started out cold and rainy.

Monday

• We used the binoculars and looked out our windows at trees
• We counted how many palm trees we could see

Tuesday

• We read A Tree is a Plant and From Seed to Pumpkin again
• We looked one last time at some of our experiments

Wednesday

• We used the binoculars again and identified a cedar tree in our neighbor's yard

Thursday

• We went to a park to identify trees, but couldn't find any that they had in our book
• There were four kinds that we had already identified, so we reviewed them

Friday

• We cut out pictures of plants and glued them on our "3"

Kindergarten, Science, Week 16

This week was spent observing the results of the experiments we started over the last weeks and identifying trees in our neighborhood. We just identified identified one tree a day, except "at another park". My goal was to know exactly what kind of tree, but sometimes we have to settle for knowing the type of tree -- such as Fir or Ash or Magnolia -- because the book I have doesn't have every tree in it.

1. On the next street over there are California Live Oaks
2. At the end of our street are Magnolias
3. In our neighborhood park there is
• Sweetgum
• American Sycamore
4. At another park
• Fir -- now we know the difference between a pine tree (in front of our house) and a fir tree
• Ash

Kindergarten, Science, Week 15

Monday we started the Top to Bottom experiment. This experiment shows that roots always grow down and the stem always grows up.

• You'll Need: several large seeds (we used pinto beans), 2 small sheets of glass or clear plastic, blotting paper or 2 - 3 paper towels, string or wire, container, water
• Lay one of the pieces of clear plastic down, fold the paper towels so they fit on the plastic.
• Soak the paper towels in water. Place the beans on the towels, then put the second piece of plastic over them.
• Fasten it all together with string or wire.
• Set it, standing up, in a container. Pour water in the container so the paper towels can continue drawing water throughout the duration of the experiment. You can use something to prop the plastic/beans up, or if your container is small enough (we used a styrofoam mushroom box) it can lean against a wall.
• Once the beans have sprouted and started putting out roots, turn the plastic/beans 180 degrees.
• In a day or two you can turn it again.
• The pictures below show the results of our experiment. This experiment took 12 days from start to final picture below.

Here the arrows show how the root started one direction, then after we turned it, the root started growing the opposite direction.

Here it is after turning it a second time. I traced one root in black and added the arrows to show the changes in direction. You can see how one of the stems changed direction, too.

Also on Monday we set up an experiment to show that plants need air and to see where they take air in.

• You'll Need: 3 identical plants (the same kind, anyway), vaseline
• On plant #1 put vaseline on the top of all the leaves
• On plant #2 put vaseline on the bottom of all the leaves
• Put no vaseline on plant #3
• As the leaves grow larger, or they grow more leaves, you'll have to add or re-apply vaseline
• Wait and see what happens.

Here are all three plants after 12 days.

Plant #1 is on the left. It is still looking good, but isn't growing as big as Plant #3, on the right. Plant #2, in the middle, has a very droopy leaf (see close up below). It was interesting that Plants #1 and #2 started growing more leaves faster than #3, I guess to compensate for the lack of air. Plant #3 was actually smaller than #1 and #2 when we started the experiment, but now it is bigger. 

Tuesday

• We read
• A Tree is a Plant
• From Seed to Pumpkin
• We looked at what is Inside Seeds
• You'll Need: lima or pinto beans, paper towels, saucer, water, knife, magnifying glass
• Fold the paper towels to fit on the saucer.
• Put the beans between a fold of the towels.
• Soak the paper towels with water and let it sit for a day or two so the beans will sprout. Make sure the paper towels stay wet.
• Once the beans have sprouted, use a knife to take them apart.
• Observe what a sprouting bean/seed looks like.

 God gave us this extra observation on Tuesday.

The pumpkin seedling on the right came up during the night and was yellow instead of green.

We looked at it every hour or so, and by noon it was green. This gave us the opportunity to talk about plants needing the sun to make chlorophyll -- which gives them their green color.

Wednesday we started an experiment about the Power of Plants.

• You'll Need: a plant that has sprouted (ours is a pinto bean), a piece of clear plastic (it needs to be clear so the sun can get to the plant), something to hold the plastic up (I cut up a shoebox)
• Set up the experiment so that the sprouted plant is under the plastic. Here is a picture of ours. (You can see paper clips. The book said to make chains of paper clips to keep track of how far the plant pushed the plastic. If it had pushed the plastic straight up that would have worked, but our experiment didn't work that way, so I removed the paper clips.)

 Here you can see that the bean has pushed the plastic up.

Thursday we started the Follow that Light experiment.

• You'll Need: a sprouted plant (we used a pinto bean), a shoe box, cardboard, tape, knife or scissors
• Take the lid off the shoe box, and using tape place 2 pieces of cardboard in the box (see picture below).
• Cut a whole in the top of the box.
• Put the plant in the box and place the lid back on the shoe box so it is dark inside. We had to use a bit of tape to keep it in place. Remove the lid and water the plant as needed. It won't need to be watered as much as your other experiments because it is in the dark.
• At first the plant was just pushing the top piece of cardboard up, so we taped a couple quarters to it so the cardboard would stay down and the plant would have to go around it.
• The plant will grow around the cardboard and through the hole to get to the sunlight.
• Through a process called phototropism, plants grow in whichever direction is toward the sunlight.

Friday we made cards from the flower we had pressed a couple weeks before.

Kindergarten, Science, Week 14

Monday we started learning about What Plants Need.

• You'll Need: 46 seeds, 6 small zipper close plastic bags, 3 paper towels, scissors, water, nail polish, felt-tip marker
• Label each bag with a number, 1 through 6. Cut the paper towels in half and moisten 3 pieces. Put 6 seeds in each bag. The books suggests radish seeds, we used 3 pinto beans and 3 pumpkin seeds in each bag.
• Do the following with each bag:
• Bag 1: moist paper towel (water), no light (put in drawer), room temperature
• Bag 2: moist paper towel (water), light, room temperature
• Bag 3: dry paper towel (no water), light, room temperature
• Bag 4: no paper towel, water (seeds floating), light room temperature
• Bag 5: moist paper towel (water), no light, freezing temperature (put in freezer)
• Bag 6: moist paper towel (water), no light, room temperature, seeds covered by nail polish (no air)
•  On Friday we gathered the bags to see our results.
• The seeds in Bag 1 and Bag 2 had sprouted, so we decided that
• seeds need water, but not too much,
• they don't need light (actually the seedlings in the dark grew more than the ones in the light)
• they need warmer temperatures
• they need air

On Tuesday we observed how Water and Nutrients Travel in Plants.

• You'll Need: a fresh rib of celery, 2 glasses of water, red and blue food coloring, knife
• Color one glass of water red and the other blue.
• Cut any dried up celery off the bottom of the rib.
• Slice the rib up the middle.
• Put one end in the red water and the other in the blue water.
• Keep a watch on the celery to see what happens.
• This is how ours looked after a couple days.

• The celery turns red and blue because plants have special tubes in their stems that suck water and nutrients up to the plant's leaves.

Wednesday we started an experiment to learn about Over Crowding.

• You'll Need: a shoe box, soil, water, 12 bean seeds
• Fill the shoe box with soil.
• In one end plant 6 beans very close together.
• At the other end plant the other 6 beans about 1-1/2-inches apart.
• As they grow, observe which seedlings do better.

Here are the results of the experiment. On the left, crowded, only 2 beans sprouted and the plants and leaves were small. On the right, beans spaced out, 3 beans sprouted and they grew tall and had large leaves.

Thursday we tried to identify the pine tree in front of our house. We think it is a Jeffrey Pine.

Friday -- see Monday

• We picked some flowers around our yard and pressed them.

Kindergarten, Science, Week 13

In this set of weeks we are learning about plants.

Monday we learned about the parts of the Flower.

• I printed a diagram of a flower 
• Using a tulip, I dissected it using an x-acto knife so we could find the parts on the diagram
• K. colored the diagram to match the colors of the tulip
• A good video to watch is: The Magic School Bus. Goes to Seed: Growing Places with Plants

Tuesday we looked at Leaves, Stems, Roots and Tubers.

• We picked some leaves and did leaf rubbings.
• We pulled up some weeds and looked at the different kinds of roots -- some are like webs and some have one main root.
• We dug a volunteer potato plant out of the compost pile. It had a couple little potatoes (tubers) growing.

Wednesday we looked around our garden for Seeds and fruit.

Thursday we played The Vegetable Game at the grocery store.

• I copied a list of vegetables and which part of the plant we eat from 365 . . . Experiments.
• At the grocery store we found the vegetables I let K. guess which part it was that we ate. If she didn't know or guessed wrong we would talk about it so she could understand. I would suggest going to the store early in the morning before there are lots of shoppers.
• We also planted 8 pinto beans (I bought 1 lb) for experiments in the next few weeks.
• I poked 4 holes in the bottom of yogurt containers and set them in a clean styrofoam meat tray.
• Then we went out and filled them with dirt from the compost pile.
• We brought them back inside, planted the pinto beans, watered them, and set them in the window.

Friday we put one of the potatoes we dug up on Tuesday in a cup of water to grow.