Planting Our First Seeds

This afternoon we began planting some of the seeds that Jasper Cat sent us in his big box.  First we looked at the new books and tried sounding out words in the titles.  Then we looked for pictures of the stems of plants.  Finally we looked at runner bean seeds and sunflower seeds.

Ethan noticed that the purple  runner bean seeds had a little white bit showing.  Everyone had a look at their own seeds and realised they all had this.  This will be the part of the seed that grows [ the embryo or primary root]. The children will be encouraged to learn the correct terms for the parts of the seed and the parts of the plant.  One seeds' purple 'coat' split open and we could see the creamy seed underneath.  Everyone planned what they would need to plant a seed and our runner bean seeds are now germinating.

          Katie was excited to plant 'magic beans'.

Sophie's task was to find out about germinating and report back to the others in class.  She looked in all our new class books but couldn't find information so I suggested she try the internet.  5  minutes of independent work later and she had found a definition and a wonderful little video clip of Mung beans germinating.  She shared it with the other children and I agreed to post a link to it here [about a third of the way down the page]. I have uploaded it below but the quality is not as good as when you follow the link.

Tomorrow we will be working on estimating in maths [prepare to have your cupboards raided for examples of estimated amounts in food packets].
 We will also use our digital microscope to look at seeds and soil close up.  If it is anything like our magnified photos of our hair and skin we took last week, prepare to be horrified, intrigued or both in equal measure!