I waited until spring to start dealing with plants so that more things would be available. I'm using God's Design for Life: The World of Plants as my guide but adding othere things that I've used in the past. Due to the fact that I'm attempting to teach using a classical method, and my dd has been exposed to a lot thanks to Classical Conversations, so I was able to deal with a few things with a little more depth than I have in the past when teaching PK and first in a classroom.
The World of Science starts with what is alive. I thought that would be fun comparing things and judging them by the 6 criteria. The next lesson involved the "poster" shown above. Besides reviewing what we had been learning, it gave my dd some much needed scissor time.
One of the criteria was that the item have cells. CC had introduced parts of the plant cell earlier in the year as part of their science memory work. We made a cell out of construction paper. My dd labeled all the parts and also journaled about the parts and their functions. She still has a hard time accepting that we can't see the cells, but that's almost a matter of faith in a way. Isn't it? :-)
We discussed flowering plants which lead to grass which is actually a flowering plant (which you would know if you never cut your lawn!) I wanted to make sure we understood that grass was more just what was out in the lawn, so I came up with this paper. She loved glueing things down and also gave her some computer practice as she assissted in finding pictures of the different grasses we had.
We went out and hugged some trees yesterday as our study continued. Just wanted to pass on what we've been doing. Looking forward to doing seeds and germination. That's always fun. It also helps me to relax some that no matter how much I get done of this unit, it actually much more in depth than most first graders or 5 year olds!
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