New trimester - grades 1 and 2

During the last trimester of this school year I will be working with Teacher Pa's class. Teacher Pa and I have been working together to cover a few very important and related topics. The main focus in science classes will be on life cycles, plants and pollinators. The kids have been observing painted lady caterpillars and ladybug larvae. Both species are native to our area and we will be releasing the adults towards the end of the school year. My goal is to have the kids understand, and observe the connectivity between plants and insects.

During our first science class we discussed how humans need plants to survive and what plants need for survival. To address the importance of plants, I asked each kid to draw what they had for lunch or dinner the day before and trace every item back to plants. This part was really straightforward for them.

After the break, I asked each child to draw a plant and label the parts of the plant that was in their drawings. The kids included flower, stem and leaves in their drawings, but no root system. We talked about their drawings and drew a complete plant diagram on the board. We then used this diagram to summarize what plants need to survive. We discussed how plants use roots to get water and some nutrients and how they use leaves to get carbon dioxide and absorb energy from the sun.

During the last 20 minutes, we started an experiment with bean plants. I germinated a few pinto beans 3 days before our meeting, and let the kids observe how seedlings develop from seeds. We then used these seedlings to start an experiment to shed light on what plants need to grow. We have some seedlings growing in the dark, some with no water, some with no added nutrients (fertilizer), some with "no" carbon dioxide (plants are being covered with a glass container, getting less carbon dioxide) and some with everything  a plant needs (our control). The kids made predictions of what they think will happen to the plants in each treatment, and they have been observing and measuring these plants on a weekly basis.