Growing Plants Investigation

This winter has been brutally cold here in Ontario and the thought of spring arriving couldn't come fast enough! When the kids showed an interest in learning about growing plants I could not be any happier for us to create a spring-like atmosphere in our classroom during the frigid month of February! To start off our "growing plants investigation", we decided to plant something simple, grass seeds in a cup. 

Intro to showing how to grow grass in a cup
Before growing our own grass seed we showed the students an example on the Smart Board from online that had step by step instructions on how to grow grass in a cup with pictures to boot. I love how the title was called "A Cup of Spring". That is exactly what we need in our classroom during this deep freeze we are experiencing this winter!

Materials to grow grass
We had potting soil,  a bag of grass seed, spray bottle with water, clear plastic cups,  stickers, googly eyes, and markers to decorate their own cups.

Planting our grass seeds
I think their favourite part was getting right into the dirt! The kids absolutely love being the ones to put their own soil in their cups!

Decorating their grass seed cups and planting the seeds
After putting the soil in their cups they put a scoop full of grass seeds, making sure to spread them out, cover with a bit of soil, and then spray with water.

Class grass seed under the indoor garden stand
Each student has their own decorated cup under the light. They were so excited when I had first wheeled the indoor garden stand into the classroom. They weren't quite sure what exactly it was and had so many questions, but now that they are growing their own grass and learning about the importance of light when growing plants, they have a much better understanding of what purpose it serves to our indoor garden and investigation on growing plants.

Watering their own grass seed cups
Each morning every child is responsible for watering their own grass when they come into the classroom. Not only are they learning about how plants grow but they are also learning valuable lessons about the importance of taking care of things and being responsible. It's astonishing to see how capable and competent they are at such a young age. You should have seen the excitement when they arrived one morning (about 1 week after planting their seeds) to see that some green grass had sprouted!

Science & discovery table plant book display
Right now during our Growing Plants Investigation, we have some plant books (both fiction and non-fiction) on display at the science table for the students to look through, to ask questions about and to maybe spark some more interest and curiosity from them. One thing my students enjoy doing is putting on the black rimmed glasses and using the magnifying glasses available at the centre when browsing through the books (now those are some real scientists if I have ever seen any!!)!

Shared reading and read aloud books
Our shared reading during the first week of our investigation was "Somebody Cared for a Flower". This book really showed the class the importance of caring for our environment and how one small act can encourage others to do the same and can make a big impact on the world around them. Besides this deep lesson embedded in the book, the simple steps to what a flower needs to grow is also learned from this text. "Plant Life Cycles" is a non-fiction text that we usually read from each day as our read aloud and each time we learn a new fact about growing plants we add it to our KWL chart at the science table under "New Information" column.



Our new class plant a "Money tree"

Science & Discovery table

Planting flowers in our garden sensory bin

Painting our indoor garden area
We decided after a class vote to call our indoor class garden "Rainbow Gardens".  A few of the students here are painting the dramatic play area with flowers, trees, butterflies, etc.