Learning about Plants

Spring time is in full swing, with flowers blooming, trees budding, and insects humming - so it's a great time to learn about plants!

Ms. Debbie found an activity online that looked very promising,so I tried it at home over the weekend, to see if it would work for our preschoolers.

The website suggested submerging leaves in water, then waiting to see the bubbles of oxygen that the leaves produce.  What a cool idea!  I tried it out with 7 different leaves that I had on hand in the garden, to see which one(s) would best demonstrate the phenomena.  

I found that the herb leaves were too small to show it well, but large flat leaves were great!  After one hour I could see some bubbles, and after 2 hours there were a lot.

Debbie and I decided to set the demonstration up early in the morning before story time, so that by the time we were ready for hands on activities, there would be something to see.

I carefully set everything up, in 3 separate bowls, so lots of kiddos could see at the same time.

Unfortunately, with our tables being jostled by 90+ people in the room, any bubbles that formed soon were knocked free.  This would make a great activity to do at home, or with a small group, but didn't go as planned for our kiddos.  If you work with children though, you know this isn't the end of the story.  I'll come back to it shortly!

At the other end of one of the table I set up another awesome plant experience for our children.  There were large bean seeds that had been soaking for 2 days (I recommend 3 or even 4 days if you can), plus pea pods, seed diagrams, and magnifying glasses.  

The children were encouraged to carefully open the pea pods, and to pull apart the beans and peas to discover their various parts.  The seed coats on the beans came off fairly easily, and splitting the seeds revealed the embryonic plants waiting inside.  They kiddos were fascinated!

So how did that interact with the oxygen experiment going on further down the table?  Soup, of course!  If you have peas and beans and leaves and rocks and water, of course the children are going to create "soup"!  I didn't witness the process, but was delighted to find the result - because it is so very typical of this age group, and a resourceful young child found a way to turn my "dud" of an experiment into a developmentally appropriate experience.  The children are always teaching me new things!

The library has some amazing resources - available for check out! - including kits full of thematic learning ideas.  We pulled out all kinds of science materials to explore, including natural items....

...jigsaw puzzles...

 ... plant parts cards and leaf and seed samples to match to them...

 ... and plant parts rubber stamps, so the children would think about the various parts of plants (which we talked about during story time) as they "built" their own.

The rubber stamps were a huge hit, and a lot of our friends went home with green thumbs... and green fingers too!

Finally, to take advantage of the lovely spring weather, we had some seriously hands on activities outside!  There were soil and tiny cups for the children to plant a real bean seed to take home and water, and there was dirt to PLAY in!  

Dirt, plastic pots, trowels and some trimmed pieces of plants made for a delightful pretend!  While our young gardeners will have to wait at least a week to see their bean seeds sprout, this sensory bin satisfied their need for instant gratification, with a generous side helping of sunshine and dirt.

Sunshine and dirt, books and families... the recipe for a perfect spring day! 

St. Patrick's Day STEAM

How fun that St. Patrick's Day actually fell on a story time day!  We had a LOT of friends show up wearing green, sporting shamrocks, and telling stories about catching leprechauns (or trying to)! 

I wanted to make sure we talked about leprechauns and their pots of gold, so we read  Tomie DePaola's Jamie O'Rourke and the Big Potato, and Clever Tom and the Leprechaun by Linda Shute.   I was really impressed with how well the children listened and participated, as the books are a little longer.  They did an awesome job - I think their families had prepared them well for some St. Patrick's Day learning.

We always sing Aiken Drum at Thursday's story time - and each child gets a ladle and a stick. As they sing along they "play upon a ladle", just like Aiken Drum!  This week we also sang along to  "Mother Goony Bird", performed by Dr. Jean, and sang a song about the colors in a rainbow.  I used this song as a basis, but modified the words slightly - in the song the last two colors are purple and pink, and I wanted to teach the kiddos two new words, the real rainbow colors: indigo and violet!

Then it was time to explore our fun activities!  For our tactile kiddos we offered some fun homemade green playdough with all kinds of treasure to hide in it.  We actually used this dough the day before as well, for a Play to Grow storytime, and it stood up to all the use really well. 

 

I looked at so many dough recipes, I can't remember where I finally found this one.  I did cook this dough, and used vinegar to replace cream of tartar in the recipe (substitute 2 parts vinegar for 1 part cream of tartar).  I've found cooked doughs to be nicer and to last longer.

For our math learning, we had counting with rainbows, little green hats, pots of gold and shamrocks.

I put shiny green glass shapes, plus green and white pompons, and saw lots of our friends carefully counting them out to match the numbers on the cards. 

I love how some children preferred the smooth glass counters, and others picked out the pompons!

Our last activity followed up the Rainbow song we sang, by making rainbows with tissue paper and glue.

This activity is satisfying in so many ways - it is super simple, so the kiddos can do it themselves, the colors are bright and pretty and quickly fill up the page, we use glue sticks, so we didn't have to wait for the glue to dry, and we offered crayons and pots for the children to color and put at the ends of their rainbows if they wanted to, so of course, many of them also drew details onto their pictures.  The only preparation for this activity is to cut tissue paper into strips that are about 1 1/2 inches wide.  My very favorite part - I use tissue paper that I've saved from gifts, so it is also free and recycled!  If you've attended even a couple of children's birthday parties, you know how much tissue paper is used and discarded - I just ask if it's okay for me to fold it up and use it for crafts, instead of it being thrown away.  Look how much fun our kiddos had making colorful rainbows with this reused resource!

We carried the rainbow theme over to our graph for the week: Which color of the rainbow do you like the best?

Since this post is about St. Patrick's Day, I'll finish with an Irish blessing:

May the dreams you hold dearest
Be those that come true,
The kindness you spread
Keep returning to you!