This week, we focused on the fascinating world of plants. Through books and other print materials (and exploration of actual plants) your little ones identified plants as living things, examined the parts of plants, experimented with what plants need to live and grow, and appreciated the importance of plants to people and other living things.

For this activity your students created notebooks to help them grow their green thumbs. Students initially learned that plants have three main parts—roots, stems, and leaves.

They learned that roots usually grow underground and absorb minerals and water from the soil. They were also told that the stem supports the plant and transports water and nutrients from the roots. Leaves contain chlorophyll, a light-absorbing green pigment used in photosynthesis. After this, they used a tape measure to measure each plant, comparing the “bigger” plants with the smaller ones.

Gardening gives children a chance to learn an important life skill, one that is overlooked in standard school curriculums. Gardening is also a great way to teach environmental awareness by exploring the workings of nature. It is this reason that we not only observed a measured a variety of common house plants, we documented all of the wonderful things we learned by recording our experiences in plant books! Please enjoy one of our handbooks below!