All About Plants!

Happy summer or almost summer to those of you that aren't there yet!  We are finishing up our 2nd week of summer school, so only 2 more to go!  :)

It got so chaotic with all the end of year festivities, but I wanted to share with you our last big unit of the year before end of the year hit...

Plants!

There are soooo many fun learning opportunities to do related to plants that we have a hard time fitting in everything we wanted to do!

So here are the things we got to in our 2 week time period:

First we read learned about the cycle of a plant and how they grow.  This is perfect for sequencing activities.  First we discussed and sequenced together on a pocket chart and then students did their own life cycle page.

Next we discussed 4 the things plants plants need to survive and why.   We made these fun flip books:

Then we moved on to parts of a plant and their functions.  We labeled our class chart together:

Students did their own labeling pages:

And they made Parts of a Plant books:

We also read the super adorable book 'Tops and Bottoms' by Janet Stevens.  It starts a good conversation about which parts of a plant vegetables and fruits come from (ie. celery is the stem, potatoes are the root, etc.).  We then did a pocket chart sort:

We then made our own pictures using the pocket chart:

 

Finally, and my personal favorite, we made and labeled our own handprint plants!  These always turn out so adorable and personalized!  The kids have so much fun making them!  I just love them!

Don't be distracted by those absolutely adorable faces!  ;)  I miss them so much already!

Probably the best part of this unit is that our school has a Community Garden that we all help take care of.  So we applied our learning while helping to start our garden for the spring!  

Our class planted red onions.  They had so much fun planting in their own little cups:

We then took these into our classroom to care for and observe for a couple weeks.

During this time we kept Daily Plant Observation Journals where students drew and recorded what happened to their plant each day.  Red onions were great for this because they changed quickly so students were excited to come in every morning and see how their plant had grown.

This is one of my personal favorite journal entries this year  :)

The students loved observing their plants.  After a couple weeks, our school had a gardening day where we got to go outside and plant our onions in the community garden.  This was probably the most fun part of this unit for them!  They are so proud that they helped to take care of the garden.

All of these activities are from my All About Plants unit.  It is packed with activities and is such a fun, hands on, and engaging unit.

All in all I would say it was a very successful final thematic unit in Kindergarten!  Thanks for taking a peek at our learning, and if you are still in school--hang in there, the end is near!  :)