Summer 2019: Plant Week

In an attempt to not lose my ever loving mind this summer I came up with the idea to have themes for each week. This way we could focus our attention on a common idea, a starting place for choosing books, crafts, projects, ect. I came up with some ideas on my own and made a list of possible activities for each idea. Currently we are three weeks in and have used one of my ideas and the others the boys came up with on there own. I'm good with this and so far it's been going very well.


The first week was Plant Week, chosen by Rowan from my list of options. We started the week of learning the parts of the plant, seed, root, leaf, flower ect. We did plant crafts, some what to my children chagrin. There happened to be worksheets in there learning activity books that were plant themed so we did those, even if they just happened to have pictures of flowers on it, but all the rest of the page was math, staying on theme was very exciting.


Alice came over one morning and got to plant seeds with us. We planted several different types of seeds, that were all different shapes, sizes, and colors. We sorted the seeds by size and color as well. We wrote the plants names in alphabetical order. We dissected an aloe plant leaf and discussed it's healing qualities. This was a timely activity since Rowan happened to be recovering from a pretty bad sunburn at this particular time. We talked about what different parts of plants we eat. We collected the seeds from all the fruits/veggies that we ate in a day. We learned the difference between a fruit and a vegetable.

We also placed some seeds in a clear cup with a wet paper towel, which only recently began to have some real sprouts noted. We are still conducting a science experiment with three avocado seeds. We peeled on and left the other two with their outer shell on and placed all three in a cups with water. Three weeks later and the peeled one has begun to have a little tuber poke out, very exciting. We also cute the bottom off of celery and lettuce and placed them in a shallow bowl of water so we could watch the plant start to regrow lettuce and celery. This worked very well, but at some point the bottom begins to rot so we disproved our theory that we might never have to buy lettuce or celery again. The sweet potato piece that we put in water is sprouting roots and we are planning on planting it in our ever struggling vegetable garden. This year the multiple five inch rains have drowned out our tomato plant and our spinach, but we have some zucchini and squash that I'm holding out hope for.

  

 Later in the week went on a leaf hunt around the lake/neighborhood. We found and identified each plant's different type of seed and discussed how the shape/size of the seed might help it spread around the neighborhood easier. I spent a lot of time thinking about how disappointed my father would be at my utter lack of ability to identify trees from their leaves. I also no zero scientific names for any plants, which would also highly disappoint my father. Sorry dad! The boys were not super enthusiastic about our leaf hunt and ended up not doing any of the fun crafts I had planned with them when we got back home. The enthusiasm for plant week began to decrease greatly as the week went on, further reinforcing the idea that they kids should pick or come up with the ideas for each week entirely.

 On our nature walk there was lots of tree climbing and discussing each different trees bark and whether each tree was an evergreen trees or deciduous tree.

 We tried, and failed to count all the rings on this huge stump by the lake, but they got the general idea.

 Plant week ended with a heart birthday celebration at the myriad gardens. I had originally planned to take them inside the Crystal Bridge to look at all the different plants, from multiple different regions in the world. However, we were quickly distracted by the Thunder fountain, the carousel, and the children's garden. I mean there were plants surrounding these areas, but no learning about plants happened on this particular outing.

  

So week one of summer theme weeks had mixed results, but two weeks later Rowan still is finding seeds on different trees and in the foods he eats. Our multiple seed experiments are in various phases and check in on them everyday. The little seeds we planted with Alice I think got dug up by tiny, exploring fingers. I think they learned a few things even if we didn't do all the crafts and experiments I had planned. We did read lots of books about various plants from the library and I am loving having a theme to keep them focused on our library trips. Up next Bird Week.