Garden Science Activities

One of our activities before our holiday had us thinking about the ingredients of a hamburger and where each ingredient originated (and how everything, even the hamburger itself, tied back to plants).  It was time to use some of our Montessori sorting cards again since they helped the kids contemplate where their food comes from.


Where Does Food Come From?

From Plant to Food (Montessori for Everyone): This set had them find the origins for syrup, corn bread, orange juice, ketchup, pasta and jam.

What's in a cookie?  Shows where cookie ingredients originate (egg-hen, vanilla-vanilla bean, baking soda-mineral, etc.) This came from an old Teacher's Book Bag pack I got a number of years ago.

Sorting Fruits and Vegetables into Two Piles:

Showing which part of the plant these fruits and vegetables come from.

This activity came from Kidssoup.

 Food Groups:

DD is sorting foods into different categories: Breads & Grains, Fruits, Vegetables, Meat & Dairy, Fats & Oils (Montessori for Everyone, Free Download)

Plant Classification (Monocots, Dicots), From the Junior Master Gardener curriculum:

This activity talked about plant classification. In this activity, the kids had to collect six leaves.  First, they examined the leaves to see if they were monocots or dicots (helpful chart).  A monocot (like corn) has just one seed leaf inside the seed coat, while dicots (like beans) have two seed leaves.   Dicots have netted veins while monocots have veins that are parallel.  Finally, the flower parts of monocots are in multiples of 3 while the flower parts of dicots come in multiples of 4 or 5.  Once we looked carefully at the veins, the kids had to study the edges and draw pictures of the edge.

Leaf Rubbing: 

Taking those same leaves, they did leaf rubbings.  This really showed the veins well. It was very easy to tell that all the leaves the kids collected were dicots.

 

  Photosynthesis Song:



Over at Eclectic Homeschooling they have put together an amazing set of resources for their botany study. Be sure to check her post out!