Plants and Flowers!

Our Plants and Flowers unit has been a great success! So much fun and so much learning! We started off with a lovely entry point – a visit to the flower market in Ghent. The children chose a selection of flowers to bring back to the classroom to further investigate and explore. Back at school the children smelled the flowers, learnt their names and drew them! This was a great starting point to the learning that followed. The children learnt about the parts of a plant – flower, stem, leaf and roots and their functions. The also learnt about the needs of a plant – water, sun and air. They planted different kinds of seeds and took care of the plants in our classroom including our herb garden. We created a garden in our classroom which the children called our ‘peaceful garden’. Here they played with the ducks in the pond and chatted to their friends. It was also a favourite place to read! Alongside this area we also created a ‘science lab’, where the children investigated different things from nature and experimented with seeds. The children were very active in their learning and brought many interesting things to school to explore. As you all know a big favourite in the lab was making ‘perfume’! There was a whole process involved where the children worked co-operatively together using great communication skills. There was also a notebook in the lab where the children could record their experiments! We had a lovely visit from a scientist (Nikos’ Dad). The children had the opportunity to look at seeds in a real microscope! Great learning!

The children learnt about pollination and how seeds are spread. The learnt the names of the parts of the flower and did their own flower dissection using a real flower! They were very excited to get ‘pollen ‘on their fingers! We went on a guided tour of the Botanical Gardens in Ghent. It was very interesting, the children got to see many tropical plants in the greenhouse, and tasted their fruit – pineapple, banana, oranges and nuts! They also played a game and had to find different soft animals hidden among the plants!

We enjoyed reading the story of ‘Jack and the beanstalk’ and taking turns to act it out. The children were very proud to do the show for Middle Pre-Primary!

For our exit point we had a quiz all about ‘Plants and Flowers’. It was a great celebration of all their learning! The quiz was followed by freshly made mint tea with cheese and crackers topped with chives!

The past two months we have also celebrated five birthdays in our class – Lana, Hiromi, Minami, Shane and Mia! Congratulations to you all!

This week the children have enjoyed Easter activities and are looking forward to the ‘egg hunt’ on Friday. Have a wonderful holiday everyone! See you in two weeks!