Day 4-Parts of a Plant

 Today we read the fable of the morning glory flower and drew it in our journals.  The teachers were so impressed with the amount of detail and also the creativity each student put into their drawing.  We looked in our wildflower guides and found out that there are several colors of morning glories, and the students all chose something in these colors for their work.  We also learned that the sweet potato is in the morning glory family!  Interesting!

 Our PK'ers are working hard on their writing. 

 Many students added in their own details--dirt, sun, roots, rain, etc. 

 I caught Sara using the index of one of the wildflower guides to look for morning glory.  WAY TO GO, Girl!

 Leticia drew one morning glory flower in each of the colors we had learned they come in! 

 Next we separated into groups and learned about the parts of the plant and what each part does.  We made a flip book to record our findings in illustrations and words.  Our little ones worked on labeling the parts.  Our older students got into talking about photosynthesis, glucose, cellulose, and even practiced writing CO2 and H2O.  A couple of our highschool volunteers shared some things they know about the plant parts.  And we discussed some of the roots we eat, which prompted us to add a little minilesson on the parts of plants we eat for later in the week. 

 We made some models of plant parts--

 Here are Sara's roots:

 And her leaves, flower and stem.

 And once again, each child's flower was put together in a very unique way!  We have some creative kiddos this summer!  AND....several of the students happened to have carrots in their lunch today and they remembered they were eating roots!

 Caring for our gardens--we added Indian Blanket plants (which is our fable story for Wednesday).  Mr. Lahmeyer was going to mow the grass so I had to rescue the volunteer plants coming up in our grass before he mowed!  So we are getting a little ahead with our plant, but that's okay!

 Ms. Rosa demonstrating the parts of the plant using our Indian Blanket babies.

 Carrying our gardens to their "safe spot" under the stairs where they stay overnight.

 And we have lots of sweet older kids like Claudia who help littler ones, like Darwin!

We also learned 2 new songs today about plants, a new poem, read several nonfiction books about plants, and caught a couple bugs.  But we were too busy to get pictures of those things!