Tuesday, September 12, 2017

Dissecting Flowers

Science so far this year has been all about plants.  Now that we've had a few lessons, we're starting to get to the more interesting stuff.  Today our topic was flowers, and I figured it'd be easier to remember the parts of a flower if they each had one in front of them.  The hostas in front of school are all in bloom still, so each kiddo picked one and dissected it at their desk as we went along.  We were able to see the pistil, stamen, and even the ovary/seeds.  It kind of weirded them out that flowers have boy and girl parts...

The prairie garden has a bunch of types of flowers. The next time we have science, I think we'll go out there and pick/dissect some more.  We'll see how much they remember!

A giant, empty (for now) fish tank is on the lab table waiting to be filled with water.  It had a lot of minerals around the edges from the tank's previous occupant (two axolotls that now live at the library in different tanks), so I had some eager students cleaning it out before the bell rang this morning and at snack time.  Some of it won't come off, but the worst of it is gone.  We're going to attempt growing things in water.  One student volunteered to bring an avocado seed to grow.  I'm picking up more lettuce for Joe tonight when I run errands.  I think I'll buy a pineapple too.  We'll probably try growing a potato and carrot the same way... I need to do more research on how to grow them that way.

I also brought a piece of onion from home we're going to examine under a microscope.  We didn't have time today, but I took out the microscopes so they'll be all ready to go tomorrow.  Except we're supposed to do history tomorrow... maybe they can look at it before school or at snack time.  We'll see I guess!

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