Teaching Timeline

Stage 4: Plant Parts

See related Stage 4 in Growing Timeline - Transplanting to Smaller Pots

Relating Growth in the Garden

At this stage you will be transplanting your pellets into smaller pots. You may also decide to keep growing your plants in pellets until planting directly into growing boxes, which is ok too. This is a great time to observe plant parts. You might choose to overview all basic plant parts, and then specifically investigate each part, starting with roots, stem and then leaves. As your plants develops you can investigate flower, fruit and then seeds again!

Big Ideas

Each part of a plant serves a vital and unique function to the life of a plant. Most plants that grow from seed share the same basic shape and structure of plant parts. These are:

Roots – function to anchor the plant and absorb moisture and nutrients in the soil. They may also store nutrients.

Stems – support the plant and carry nutrients and moisture from roots to other parts of the plant.

Leaves – act as the food factory for plants (where photosynthesis happens), and also help divert rainfall to the roots and regulate a plant’s temperature.

Flowers – function as the place for pollination to occur.

Fruit – holds and protects the seeds of the plant and function to help seed dispersal.

Questions

• What part of a plant contains the seeds?

• What part of a plant gets water from the soil?

• What part of a plant uses sunlight to make food?

• What part of a plant provides support to the leaves?

• Where do plants get the energy they need to grow?

Activities Inspiration

• We eat plant parts! Have students identify different vegetables as plants parts. Write the plant parts on the board and ask students to identify common foods as a plant part. You might bring in actual food items or use pictures. For example, lettuce is leaves, carrots are a root and peas are a seed.

• Breakfast Botany. Tell the class that you had a delicious breakfast of plant parts, explaining that people rarely eat a whole plant. Tell the students you ate a bowl of oval, flattened seeds and dried, brown shriveled fruit with fragrant, crushed bark sprinkled on top. You drank a cup of dried leaves soaked in water with a spoonful of granulated stems and a slice of yellow fruit. Can they guess what you ate? (A bowl of oatmeal with raisins and cinnamon, and a cup of tea with a spoonful of sugar and slice of lemon.) Can students describe their lunch in this way?

• Chlorophyll Detectives.Help your students investigate which parts of the plants contain chlorophyll. Have students collect different plant specimens from your garden (or potted classroom plants). They should divide their plant material into the following groups: roots, petals, stems, fruit, leaves (alive and dead), and seeds. Using a mortar and pestle, grind up this plant material (separately) to access the inside of the cells. Pour a little bit of acetone (nail polish remover) into each bowl of material and add a piece of filter paper (strips of white coffee filters work well) into the liquid. After 20 minutes, look to see if a green stripe has appeared on the filter paper, indicating that chlorophyll is present. This activity will help the students understand the role chlorophyll plays in photosynthesis and where it can be found in the plant (usually the green parts).

• Chlorophyll Rubbings.For younger students, you can use your green leaves to make chlorophyll rubbings. Have students use their green pigments to draw a nature scene or tree.

• Demonstrate How Water Moves in a Plant. Fill a few glass jars with 1 cup of water and 10 drops of food colouring. Place a celery stalk in each jar. Wait one hour (or longer for dramatic effects) and you will see the food colouring has travelled up the stems and coloured the leaves. You can cut the celery in half for students to view the xylem, the tiny tubes that carry water up the stem.

• Leaves and Oxygen. Submerge a green leaf in water. Place your leaf in the glass in a sunny location or under your grow lights. Predict what will happen! In about an hour, look carefully at the sides of the class. Your students should see lots of tiny bubbles that have formed on the edge of the leaf and sides of glass. The bubbles you see are oxygen. Leaves take in carbon dioxide and through photosynthesis, they create food for the plant with a by-product of oxygen. Experiment by leaving one leaf in the dark and one in the light. What do you notice?

• Study Plant Transpiration. Wrap a plastic bag around a branch of a garden plant. Observe what happens. You should begin to see water gathering in the bag. What is happening is called "transpiration." This is the process whereby the leaves on green plants give off water that they do not need. Look at the bottom of the leaves and you will see little dots which are called stomates. The stomata give off the excess water.

• Create Your Own Root Viewer.  Create your own root views with a clear plastic cup or jar. Fill with soil and plant seeds along the sides of the jar. Ensure that you cover the jar with a cloth or dark paper to block out light. Have students remove the covering every day for 5 minutes to observe changes.

• Recycled Plants. Have students create plant models of plants out of recycled materials, such as plastic bags or cardboard. This is a great way to learn about plant parts and functions.

• Plant Parts Project. Using different vegetables for each plant part (leaf, stem, root, flower, fruit, seed), construct a new edible plant. This new plant can be inspiration for a creative writing activity or creating plant diagrams.

Children's Literature

• Plant Parts by Steffi Cavell-Clark

• From Seed to Plant by Allan Fowler

• What Do Roots Do? by Kathleen V. Kudlinski

• One Bean by Anne Rockwell

• Inside a Plant by Christina Hill

• Plant Stems and Roots by David M. Schwartz

Stage 8: Agriculture & Environmental Stewardship

See related Stage 8 in Growing Timeline - Trellising & Staking

Relating Growth in the Garden

You will continue with maintenance and monitoring in your garden at this time. You may need to support plants with a trellis or stake. As your garden begins to mature, it is a great time to make intentional connections between caring for your plants and the importance of caring for our environment, as well as connecting your garden to the world of agriculture.

Big Ideas

What student isn’t fascinated by the natural world? A garden is a great place to harvest a student’s natural wonder into caring and action. In your classroom LGT garden, students will witness natural cycles, cause and effect and understand how humans depend on plants and how plants and animals depend on each other. Help students connect their garden to the natural world and our need to respect and care for our environment.

At the same time, your garden can help students create meaningful, informed connections between the food students grow and eat, and the agricultural processes involved in producing it. Many students will understand that food is grown on farms and arrives on their plate, but they may have difficulty understanding what happens in between. Use your garden as a starting point to discuss where our grocery store food comes from and how it gets to us, what happens in between and what impacts this system has on our lives. Help to draw connections between former lessons on soil, plant adaptation, ecological cycles and plant needs to agriculture.

Questions

• How do the choices you make affect the environment?

• How do people affect plants in their environment?

• What actions can I take to care for and respect the environment?

• How do farmers steward their land and water? Why is this important?

• How does the grocery store get its food products? What is agriculture?

• What would the world be like if there were no farmers?

• Which foods in your lunch were grown on a farm? Where in the world did they come from?

Activities Inspiration

• Invite a farmer into your class or visit a farm. Discuss the differences between your garden and a farm. Discuss the ways that farmers steward the land and water.

• Make a Business Plan. Develop a simple business plan to sell some of your plants or garden vegetables. What are the challenges you face? How does this relate to the challenges faced by farmers?

• Relate Garden Challenges to the Farm. Relate the challenges in your garden – pests, water or air issues to the issues and uncertainty faced by farmers.

• Reliance on Nature. Brainstorm all of the ways that farmers depend on nature. How do farmers work with nature and adapt farming practices? What are some natural occurrences that might cause issues for farmers? How do farmers plan for these natural occurrences?

• Explore the science and technology of Agriculture. Think about the tools that students use in the garden. How does using the right tools help to accomplish your gardening jobs more efficiently? Research different tools and technology used by farmers. How are some farming tools the same or different from the tools used in the garden?

• Show Appreciation for Farmers. Have students write letters to a local farmer thanking them for their hard work and describing what they enjoyed about eating their products.

• Build a bottle ecosystem! You can make a simple self-sustaining terrarium from a 2-litre pop bottle. Students can observe the interactions, relationships and cycles occurring in their ecosystem. Building is just the beginning! Have students monitor their ecosystems and record their observations in their journal. What happens if students disturb their ecosystem or a pollutant is introduced?

• Brainstorm a stewardship list. Together with students, consider how they can best care for the environment and the actions they can take.  

• Plant Collage. Make a collage contrasting the ways that humans hurt and help plants.

• Do a waste audit. Do an audit of food waste for your classroom, school or home. Collect your food waste for a few days and weigh or measure by volume. Divide by the number of days. Figure out what size of composting system would be needed to divert this waste from the landfill.

Children's Literature

• How did that get in my lunchbox? By Chris Butterworth

• Where do my clothes come from?By Chris Butterworth 

• Anywhere Farm by Phyllis Root.

• Before we Eat: From Farm to Table by Patt Brisson, Mary Azarian

• PB & J Hooray! Your Sandwiches Amazing Journey from Farm to Table By Janet Nolan

• The Lorax by Dr. Suess

• The Little Gardener by Emily Hughes

• Rachel Carson and Her Book that Changed the World by Laurie Lawlor

• Here We Are: Notes for Living on Planet Earth by Oliver Jeffers

• The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein

• Compost Stew: An A to Z Recipe for the Earth by Mary McKenna Siddals

Stage 10: Healthy Eating & Food Preparation

See related Stage 1 in Growing Timeline - Harvest

Relating Growth in the Garden

At this point, you will be harvesting from your garden. Harvesting is not likely to happen all at once, unless you have planned your planting schedule that way. You can incorporate nutrition education throughout the year as different crops become ready to eat. Try preparing your veggies in class and enjoy your garden bounty together!

Big Ideas

Nutrition education doesn’t usually have its own dedicated study in schools, but with rising health issues related to the consumption of nutrient poor foods, the garden is an invaluable tool for student engagement with healthy food behaviours. More and more, nutrition education is a component of a school’s wellness policy. Involving students in the preparation of food in the classroom, as well as consistent messages about healthy eating has been shown to have a positive effect on student eating behaviours and nutrition knowledge. Instead of telling students what they should or shouldn’t eat, inspire curiosity and help students make discovering new foods fun. Plan ahead for food preparation in the classroom and consider food safety in your preparations. Even if you can’t prepare food in your classroom, use the garden as a living laboratory to engage student in food and nutrition education.

Questions

• Why do you think we need to eat fresh fruit and vegetables?

• How many fruits and vegetables should we eat each day to be healthy?

• Why should we eat lots of different colours of fruits and vegetables?

• What are your favourite vegetables to grow in our garden? What do you wish we could grow in our garden?

• What is your favourite root to eat? Leaf? Fruit? Seed?

• Many people choose certain foods because they taste good. What other reasons do you think people have for making food choices?

• What would happen if you didn’t eat any fruits or vegetables?

Activities Inspiration

• Have a Salad-celebration. We encourage Little Green Thumbs classrooms to celebrate the end of a growing season with a salad-bration. Try mixing your lettuce salad with creative sides like beans, seeds, and other vegetables.

• Taste test. Do a grocery store vs. garden grown taste test or simply taste test the garden vegetables. Ask students to describe the vegetables using all of their senses: smell, taste, touch, sound and sight. Give each vegetable a rating of 1 to 5, based on each sense.

• Dry some herbs. The traditional method of drying herbs is to tie them in bunches and hang them upside down. Once dried, combine different herbs to create your classroom’s own unique tea blend or try making herb butter. You might also make sweet-smelling sachets or potpourri.

• Encourage students to explore the origins and traditional uses of herbs. Research locally grown herbs used traditionally by Indigenous peoples in your region, as well as herbs used by Indigenous people today. Where were the herbs in your garden first grown and used? Do they have symbolic significance (e.g., sage: wisdom)? Were they grown for medicinal, culinary, or other applications? Are there modern products that are still derived from these important plants? Make a chart to match the uses of various herbs with newer medicines or products that have assumed the same role in modern times.

• Prepare salad dressing. Preparing salad dressing is a great way to learn about emulsion and Canadian crops such as mustard or canola oil. Students can make their own dressings from garden products.

• Create a classroom recipe book. Create a special classroom recipe book with ideas for creative and fun salads or other recipes prepared with garden produce.

• Make your own stone soup! Have students each bring in one ingredient to add to a soup potluck. This might take a little coordination to make sure you have a variety of vegetables. Start a discussion with questions like: What is “community”? What are some examples of communities? Why is community important? What can a community do to help each other stay healthy? Think of your class as a community. What are some ways we’ve worked together to get tasks done? What skills and resources do we have collectively as a community?

• Investigate vegetable prices in a supermarket. Track the amount of produce harvested in your garden and use the market prices to determine the value of your harvest.

• Make fresh food persuasion posters. Research the nutritional content of some of your garden produce and challenge students to make marketing posters to ‘sell’ students on vegetables.

• Food interviews. Have students partner up to interview each other about food. As a class develop a set of questions to ask, such as: What is your favourite vegetable? What do you eat for breakfast? What foods do you help prepare? Compile the answers on a chart. What do the answers tell us about the class?

• Read the Little Green Thumbs digital storybook, ‘Little Green Thumbs’ Rainbow Salad-bration. Find this digital story in the online teacher portal. The story encourages students to eat a rainbow of fruits and vegetables and includes activities at the end.

Children's Literature

• The Ugly Vegetables by Grace Lin

• No I will not Eat a Tomato by Lauren Child

• Stone Soup by Jon J Muth

• The Vegetables We Eat by Gail Gibbons

• Plants Feed Me by Lizzy Rockwell