All That's Goood: Roots and Shoots

February 25, 2011

Roots and Shoots

After looking at seeds; learning what they need to grow, what are their parts and how they travel, we used this parts of a plant diagram to see the where the roots and the stems would be on the whole plant. We know from our study of the seed that the radicle turns into the roots and the plumule turnes into the stem and the leaves. We began by setting up some experiment that would give us a good look at some roots and some stems.

Observing Roots Experiment #1:
The idea for this experiment T.J. found in The First Book of Plants by Alice Dickenson.
To do this experiment you need the following:
two pieces of glass, paper towels, two rubber bands (thick ones), a shallow pan, seeds, and some water.
Now to get started:
Place the glass on a flat surface, add a paper towel (the paper towel must butt up against the bottom edge of the glass to absorb water), palce the seeds in a row and cover it with the second piece of glass. Hold the two pieces of glass together with strong rubber bands like the ones found on broccoli when you buy it. Place the bound glass in a tilted position in a shallow pan, we used a flat sloped rock with a thick paper between it and the glass. Add water to the shallow pan and the seeds will soon begin to grow.

Observing Stems Experiment #2:

We began by soaking some peas overnight. Then we planted them in pots and watched them grow.

Both experiments sort of failed because the lettuce seeds we used in experiment #1 were too small to see much of the parts of the roots and the peas died, but we did get to see the sprouts and the stems and the leaves. This would have been a better experimant to observe both....

To do this experiment place a folded paper towel in jar.Add a little wtaer tot he bottom of the jar, then stuff in bean seeds between the paper towel and the side of the glass jar. Place in a warm place to grow.

In this sprout you can more easily see the roots and stems.

While the experiemnts were growing, we worked on learning the parts of the roots and the parts of the stems. I used the three step lesson idea. First I showed them the cards I had made, telling them what each cards represented. Secondly I asked them to point to the cards as I named their parts. next, I gave them cards with the names cut off and they put them together. The third step they colored and labled cards of their own.