Enrichment Ideas for Plant Growth and
Development
Expand the boundaries of your kit study. Encourage your
students' curiosity with these outlets for extending
engagement in research.
online
activities | hands-on
experiments and activities | gardening | trees | pollination | food
history | soil health | mini-movies
Online Activities
The Great Plant Escape
Richly educational and lots
of fun, this site makes great use of the web by allowing
students to help Detective LePlant solve the mysteries of
plant life while learning all kinds of basics along the way.
This site is designed with fourth and fifth graders in mind.
Read the Teacher's Guide and find out how to use this site
to your own best advantage, and how it aligns with other
disciples. If you contact Detective LePlant, he'll send you
a poster.
Plant-Parts Salad
This fun, clickable activity
helps students make connections between the foods we eat and
plant anatomy though building a salad. Each selection
explains what it is about that particular edible plant part
that indicates which part of the plant it is. This is quick,
and especially well suited to younger students.
BBC: Plants
Spend some time exploring
this large and interesting subset of the BBC's online
resources. There are feature articles, garden ideas, games,
video visits to gardens, and other plant resources that are
likely to catch your eye.
Build-a-Prairie
Your students will be hooked on this site, as they learn
which plants and animals go together best to create a
thriving ecosystem, and a living prairie unfurls before
their eyes. You may want to use this as a guided class
activity to discuss the interdependence of living
things.
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Hands-On Experiments and
Activities
Plant Growth Experiment
The US Department of
Education created this experiment for kids to do at home
with parents, but it could work in a classroom setting just
as well. Using plant clippings, students investigate the
variables that affect growth.
Celery Stalks at Midnight
Using some celery stalks and
food coloring, students can engage in this simple experiment
that illustrates how water is drawn up through a
plant.
How to Extract DNA from Anything Living
While discussing pollination and growth, you may want to
extend your study to this neat activity that uses simple
household items to extract strands of DNA that are visible
to the naked eye. Even if you don't do the activity, you may
want to look at this page with your students.
Plant Nutrient Team
Print out the comic book-style pages of this coloring and
activity book that follows the adventures and roles of the
nutrient team (Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Potassium) as they
take you on a journey to learn about how they are important
nutrients that help plants grow.
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Gardening
KINDERGarden
This is a full resource for gardening with young learners.
Before jumping into creating a school garden, read this page
first, which is a sensible and straightforward place to
begin and get your footing if you're considering a school
garden. The author brings up practical considerations and
offers good resources for getting started.
KidsGardening
This site offers tremendous
educational resources and activities that can lend
themselves easily to classroom study. Visit the Teacher's
Resource Room for features and interdisciplinary resources.
If you create a garden, you can register it (as thousands of
other schools have done) here, so you can get in touch with
other classroom gardeners and share ideas. Lacking money and
resources? Be sure to look at the Grants and Resources
section that helps you gain "funds, freebies, seeds, books,
web links, and technical support."
Schoolyard Habitats
The National Wildlife
Foundation offers resources and programs to help you create
a schoolyard habitat of your own, along with a chance to
join the many hundreds of schools that have become certified
schoolyard habitat sites.
Schoolyard Habitat Development
If you're looking for
resources to create a school habitat of your own, scroll
down this page beyond the logos to get to the three
small—but worthwhile!—links to materials, links,
and online schoolyard experiments. The links section is
large and relevant, and the online schoolyard habitats
section has information to help you really add scientific
focus to your garden/habitat study.
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Trees
Tree Ring Dating (Dendrochronology)
Dendrochronology is study and
comparison of tree ring growths, which can provide very
accurate dates about the wood itself or artifacts found in
close proximity to it. Although it employs rather advanced
vocabulary, the information contained on this page could
help to launch some interesting class discussions.
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Pollination
Honey Facts and Fun for Kids
If you're working with issues
of pollination and bees, you might want to explore this
resource from the National Honey Board that features honey
and honey bee facts; trivia, history, a pollination map,
games, and a webcam of live honey bees.
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Food History
Seeds of Change Garden
As well as taking a dynamic
year-round approach to garden study, this site also does a
fantastic job of discussing where the foods we grow came
from originally, as well as including lots of history and
activities that explore and celebrate diversity.
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Soil Health
The Adventures of Herman the Worm
This colorful site reminds
that without worms, our soil would be very poor. Worms are
important, and Herman will tell you about the history of the
worm, his anatomy, where he lives, what he eats, and how he
helps the soil.
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Mini-Movies
Photosynthesis Movie
BrainPOP presents this
animated movie that explains photosynthesis simply, using
helpful visual illustrations of the natural
processes.
Seasons Movie
This BrainPOP movie employs
accurate visuals to help kids understand the effects that
the tilt of the earth and its orbit around the sun have on
seasonal change.
Autumn Leaves Movie
The visual animation in this
movie is really helpful in illustrating just what is taking
place inside leaves that causes them to have different
colors in the fall.
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