Now that you have a little background, let me just say, I had to find a way to make plants interesting! Students know if you are passionate about something or if you are bored with it. How you feel about a topic that you teach is easily conveyed and contagious! How was I going to get third graders excited about plants, and have them NOT associate it with sleep? Good question!
I began first by thinking of my good friend Deb Hanson (who doesn’t have any involvement in my posts- she’s just as surprised as you are). I love all her craftivity products and I spend probably a little too much money in her store. (Sorry Deb, but really, I do spend a lot of money on you!) I went to her store to see if she had any neat plant ideas to spark my kiddos’ interests. They loved all her other activities we have done in the past, so why not. Nope. Nothing. Deb really needs to branch into science. (She will likely leave a comment after this post telling me I talked waaaaaaaaay too much about her). So after a lot of thinking (and more thinking) I finally came up with an idea. My plant craftivity! It is a 3-D version of a pot with a plant coming out of it. Yarn that holds leaves represent the stems, while the leaves hold the function of various plant parts. It could then hang from your ceiling (Unless you live in a district where the Fire Marshall frowns on that…). How fun and exciting. I tried it out with my kids. They definitely enjoyed it. Then I thought, okay, I got this! I then came up with my plant unit that is packed full of exciting experiments and activities. This unit explores a plant’s needs, their parts and functions, classifying plants, and their life cycle.
I have created this plant unit sample with a fun activity that you can download for free to see if you would enjoy my unit! Also, I would suggest using glitter more than Kool-Aid. It’s a bit more effective, but Kool-Aid works too for these plant activities.
We had fun with my Plant Causation Cards along with this unit too! My class always loves my causation cards because they can just get out of their seat and move around while reviewing! (You can download a set of my free economic causation cards here to get an idea of the kind of activities I’m describing and what causation cards are.)
2 Responses
Yes, I was surprised to find my name mentioned!! 🙂 Thank you!! I am honored to be mentioned! I absolutely LOVE your plant craftivity, and the other activities in your unit sound so engaging- the role play, the life cycle story, and of course, the causation cards! I wish we lived closer together- we would have so much fun being teaching partners because our approaches and methods would totally match up! I can just imagine us bouncing ideas off one another! Thanks again for mentioning me- you made my day!
I totally wish that too! I think we would have a lot of fun and come up with some amazing ideas!! 😉