Do Plants Like Pizza?

The Touch and Feel was full of all types of seeds this morning.  Striped sunflower seeds, tiny grass seeds, large white bean seeds, and popcorn seeds....just to name a few.  The kids had fun sorting and matching and predicting what might grow if we planted each seed.

Ms. Gretchen and friends were here today for music class.  First, we sang a song about how ants move and we did the movements around the classroom.  We crawled, and stomped, and tiptoed, and flew. The next song was about a lost dog and the kids took turns following directions to put the dog where the teacher told them....on their head, on their shoe, on their knee.  Then the teachers passed out fall leaves to each child.  While we sang about the leaves, we held them up above our heads (like they were hanging on a tree), then we moved them around like they were blowing in the wind, then they all fell to the ground.  The highlight of the day was definitely the parachute.  We sang a song about leaves in the fall and then we put the leaves on the parachute and made them fly around.  There was so much laughing, you could barely hear the words to the song!  Before the good-bye song, we sang Mary Had a Little Lamb using the visuals.  The kids are learning the words enough to fill in the words.  We will miss our music friends next week as they are on fall break!

The story today was Grow Flower Grow by Lisa Bruce.  This is the story of a little girl named Fran who wants to grow a flower.  First, she starts by telling it to grow.  When it doesn't listen, she decides it must be hungry. She goes to the refrigerator and gets some of her favorite foods to share.  She tries pizza, and cheeseburgers, and spaghetti, and cookies, and strawberry ice cream.  She even shares the dog's bone with the plant.  Fran becomes really angry when the plant won't grow....and she throws it out.  After a few rainy and sunny days, she goes outside to play and finds a big surprise....a huge flower!

The kids thought the book was super funny.  They knew that plants didn't eat people food, but they weren't sure of all the things that it did need to grow and survive.  We made a list to help us remember.  Plants need sun, water, dirt, and air to grow.  They don't like people food so that won't work. 

Before we headed to science, we talked about how a seed grows into a plant.  After you plant the seed in the dirt, it grows roots.  Roots grow under the ground.  Then, a small sprout appears.  The sprout grows bigger into a stem.  Then leaves and flowers grow.  We labeled all the parts of the flower on our chart.

 

In science, we planted our own seeds.  We followed the directions to add dirt, dig a hole, and plant our seed.  Then we covered the seed up with dirt and gave it some water.  It needs sun, air, and more water to grow into a bean plant.  We will be excited to hear about how the plants are doing at home, so be sure and take them out of the bags.

Today was a fun last day to talk about seeds and gardens.  Next week....Foods That Grow!