New Unit: Plants in Our Midst

 Transdisciplinary Theme: How We Share The Planet

Central Idea: Plants play a unique role in our lives and the lives of animals.

Lines Of Inquiry:

The features of plants in our local areas

How animals/people use plants

The needs of plants in our local area

Pulling weeds
In the formative week Deb and I will gather the children's prior knowledge on plants and questions they have that will lead our inquiry. It would seem the Fire Group knows quite a lot! After pulling weeds from the planter box and examining them with magnifying glasses and drawing a plant with leaves and roots the children had this to say . . .

Careful observations

Sophie

We eat plants. Sticks come from trees. When you pick a leaf you can't stick it back on. Flowers fall off of trees. Plants grow.

Esme

When you pick a flower it doesn't grow anymore and sometime while you're walking back to your house it dies. There are prickly plants in every forest of the world, it's true! Coyotes, wolves, and bears live in the forest. 

Rielle

Roots grow under the ground. You can find prickly plants in our forest, but not all forests. Leaves fall from trees. Some plants stop growing. Parsley is a plant you can eat.

Tyreese

Sticks fall of off trees. When the wind blows leaves fall.

Oliver

When you touch a prickly plant it hurts. People get paper from trees.

Rylan

Plants need sun, water and food. Trees have leaves. Some trees are called Maple and that's where syrup comes from. Bears live in the forest. 

Plant Illustration

The lively discussion that followed Oliver's statement "When you touch a prickly plant it hurts" helped us formulate our first question "Are prickly plants found in forests around the world?"

I read a story called "I Eat Leaves" that features animals that eat leaves, at the end the children responded to the question "Do you eat leaves?" Esme and Tyreese thought no, everyone else thought yes. After discussing the kinds of leaves people eat the children concluded "There are some leaves we eat and some leaves we don't eat" and they've made plans to create a collection of each category of leaves. It will also be a good opportunity to taste leaves we can eat!

More Plant Illustration