How did our preschool garden grow? (K1 gardening)

Growth in Plants

In the middle of the summer, when I first started to plan the gardening unit for preschool science this year it occurred to me that lessons which focused on sprouting seeds didn't make much sense in the fall.

There are so few plants that you would think of sprouting in September or October in the northern hemisphere - especially this far north.  So, just as we are starting school and would like to start new growing projects the weather is turning against us and getting colder and darker every week. As this was going to be a project that went through the whole school year I knew that early spring would be a much better time to study seeds and to sprout and grow plants from seeds. 

That got me thinking that there is more than one way to grow a plant - ie. vegetative propagation -so I bought the Royal Horticultural Society's guide to Propagation Techniques and read a little bit about growing new plants from already existing plants

One of the first things that I learned is that this type of growth is possible because we are using the plant's ability to produce new organs from adventitious* cells. 

 * (Isn't that a wonderful word - adventitious - it sounds as though deep in their cells the plants are the true explorers in our world - and in a way they are - by having the ability to grow new buds and shoots from a pruned branch or stem they are creating a completely new plant from the original plant- that certainly is very adventurous !)

Thinking about growing new plants from the cuttings and stems of already existing plants also reminded me of the Redwood tree circles that you find in Santa Cruz CA - where I went to college.  And in looking up the botanical meaning adventitious on the internet I found the following definition 

"Adventitious buds are often formed after the stem is wounded or pruned. The adventitious buds help to replace lost branches. Adventitious buds and shoots also may develop on mature tree trunks when a shaded trunk is exposed to bright sunlight because surrounding trees are cut down. Redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) trees often develop many adventitious buds on their lower trunks. If the main trunk dies, a new one often sprouts from one of the adventitious buds."

Here is a short clip of a redwood tree circle:

For our preschool classes I wanted to focus during the first few months of school on this kind of vegetative growth because this was something that we could do with common houseplants and root vegetables during the fall and winter months.  Once the plants got growing they would make a nice living addition to the classroom or a new plant that students could take home with them.

 I created a series of lesson plans based on a few simple questions -

• How can we make new plants from old ones?

• What parts of a plant might be used to grow a new plant?

• What do plants need to grow?

If you work with young children - or have some young children in your family - here are some ideas for some projects that you can do with them at any time of year to learn about and observe some common ways that plants grow.  I have made a series of short slide shows to give you an idea of how we did each short project.

Idea 1.  Try growing new plants from Roots

For one lesson we investigated what parts of some common root vegetables would grow - we cut beets and carrots into slices and then observed how they grew….

If you look closely at the very end of the slideshow you can see the new stems and leaves growing from the tops of the beet and carrot.  You can use any common root vegetables - I think it works best if  still have their green tops and leaves on them but I know people who have done it with carrots that have no tops left at all.  

Idea 2. Try growing new plants from Bulbs

We also looked at bulbs - some were flowering bulbs such as hyanciths but we also did come very close observations of garlic bulbs.

I would like to do more lessons with onions and garlic in the future - what a great project to have growing in a a classroom window.  They can then be harvested and you have some great materials for some cooking activities as well.

Idea 3. Trying growing new plants from Stems

Finally, for a classic example of vegitative growth - consider taking some cuttings from some plants that you probably already have around the house or in your garden.  We took cuttings from some common herbs such as peppermint and from some house plants but here is a good starter list to choose from:

Swedish Ivy (Plectracnthus australis)

Coleus (Coleus blumei)

ANY members of the mint family Lamiaceae

English Ivy – (Hedera helix)

Wandering Jew- (Zebrina pendula or Tradescantia fluminensis)

Pothos (Pothos aureus, Rhaphidophora aurea, or Scindapsus aureus)

We tried taking cuttings just below the nodes on the stems and we treated some with rooting hormones and left some alone.   If appears to me that there was no difference and in fact the stems that were not treated with any hormone looked to be growing faster in some instances.   So, try it out for your self - it would be a good investigation to try with older students who could make careful measurements over several weeks to track the root growth.  

Coming full circle - to pumpkins again!

You may be wondering - if you read the very first post on this blog - what happened in the pumpkin patch which we planted at the beginning of the school year for our preschool gardening unit?

Well all the pumpkin and squash plants grew  and several flowered- and a few even put out small pumpkins - before it got too cold and dark.   Here is a short slideshow of the pumpkin patch over the last three month.  And now that we have the raised beds filled with soil we are thinking about putting on some cold frames to allow us to grow more plants through out the winter.   But, no matter what we do in the late winter we will be all ready for sprouting and planting pumpkin seeds.  Then we can plant the new young plants out in the raised beds in the spring.  That is the proper time to start plants from seeds!

Measuring the Weather

Each week two students in each of the Grade 3 classes start the morning by going out to the courtyard in front of their classroom and collecting the weather data for the class.  These meteorologists are building up an essential data base for us.   Because London has such dynamic weather and so many micro-climates there is no local weather station that is close enough to us for accurate data on our neighborhood.
At the end of last week, I interviewed the students that are collecting the weather data to give you an idea of how we collect each kind of measurement.

An Encounter and An Invitation

Because we live close to two parks in London, (one small and one large) we often hear the strange calls, cries and barks of foxes at night, especially in the fall and spring.   But, we rarely see them.

One morning last week on my way to school I met a red fox (Vulpes vulpes).   He was trotting down the sidewalk – looking a little nervous and uncertain – but with enough confidence to have passed several buildings by the time he got to me.   I stood frozen in place while he looked quickly around and with a quick jump landed in the small cement courtyard surrounding an apartment building where I stood. He scanned his surroundings quickly and then trotted around the side of the building and jumped over a hedge and was out of sight into the back gardens behind the building.  A man was walking along the alleyway beside the building as this happened, he didn't see the fox.   He looked at me curiously as I was standing staring at a cement square that was now empty of anything save a hedge.  I looked at him and smiled and said "A fox".   He glanced towards the direction the fox had gone and nodded, smiled back and said "Fox". 

 I always feel such a jolt of surprise and joy when I see a wild creature in the city.  

I think that is one reason that I continue to keep several different kinds of animals in the science room.   In general, I have mixed feelings about having animals in elementary classrooms. It is so hard to give them a decent quality of life.  But, in our urban environment this is one of the few opportunities most children have to regularly encounter and observe animals.  When I first arrived at the school the science room already had several animals including corn snakes, a pond turtle and a tarantula.  Those are all still here (being long lived species) and have been joined by a number of animals that needed a home.  It started with a container of snail eggs that were left on my desk the first December.  Part of our first Christmas in London involved tending to new-hatched snails.   They turned out to be the large African snails and several are still resident in the science room.  Those were followed by more turtles that needed homes.  (Why do people think pet turtles are a good idea? - we humans have a hard time making a 30 year commitment to another human being - why do people think getting a long-lived reptile is a good idea?)  And, more recently some South American rodents include Degus and a Chinchilla.
I didn't go looking for any of them - all of them were animals that someone had gotten as a pet and then couldn't keep.   They make the lower school science room one of the most pleasant rooms in the school because they fill it with life.

Molly a chinchilla that needed a home.  

One of our Degus  (Octodon degus)

And, in addition to the regular residents of the science room in Grade 4 students also spend some time observing the smaller, more short-lived animals such as crayfish, crickets, mealworms/darkling beetles and locusts.  I hope by now the Grade 4 students have a better appreciation and understanding for the most numerous animals on earth - the arthropods (insects, spiders, isopods and crustaceans) and the molluscs (snails, clams, octopus and squid).

"Rosy" - the Chilean Rose Taratula (Grammostola  rosea) - just after she shed  or molted her skin

I do think it is important for children to have a chance to spend time observing and learning to respect and understand other kinds of living organisms. Each child needs an opportunity to develop their own relationship to other living things - and to develop a sense of respect for all life.  Not all animals are pets and that is a good thing.

But, back to my encounter with the fox one morning.  It reminded of why we have started the year with more time for the Grade 3 students to sit quietly and observe a small spot outside.  Even though we are a very urban campus we have nooks and crannies all around the school buildings that are full of vegetation and life.  If you sit quietly for a few moments you are sure to see some bird or squirrel or spider busily going about making it way in life.  

And that thought then reminded me of one Mary Oliver’s poems.  She has written so many wonderful poems about the natural world and a few of those have been about red foxes that she meets on occasion in her rambles.  But, that morning I was reminded of the poem by Mary Oliver that I shared with some the Grade 3 students at the beginning of school when we first started to observe our special spot in the Lower School courtyard.

Poet Mary Oliver

An Invitation
by Mary Oliver

Oh, do you have time
to linger
for just a little while
out of your busy

and very important day
for the goldfinches
that have gathered
in a field of thistles

for a musical battle,
to see who can sing
the highest note, or the lowest,

of the most expressive of mirth,
or the most tender?
Their strong, blunt beaks
drink the air

as they strive
melodiously
not for your sake
and not for mine

and not for the sake of winning
but for sheer delight and gratitude -
believe us, they say,
it is a serious thing

just to be alive
on this fresh morning
in this broken world.
I beg of you,

do not walk by
without pausing
to attend to this
rather ridiculous performance.

It could mean something,
It could mean everything,
It could be what Rilke meant, when he wrote:
You must change your life.

Here is a link to a recent interview that Mary Oliver had with National Public Radio "Mary Oliver is a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet whose body of work is largely filled with imagery of the natural world — cats, opossums crossing the street, sunflowers and black oaks in the sunshine. Her most recent collection is entitled A Thousand Mornings."

Orb weaving spiders have been very abundant this year.  The Grade 3 students have been observing a couple spiders in our recent study of the courtyard area.  That gave me an idea for a short video to try out creating YouTube videos of our science projects.   So, here is a link to my freshman effort to link some observations of spiders with a related Mary Oliver poem.

   

Finally - back to foxes at last!

To hear some of the strange and wonderful calls that red foxes can make go to the Macaulay Library sound archives at the The Cornell Lab of Ornithology

And if you would like to have a few minutes of watching a red fox yourself - go to their video collection as well. 

And just for fun here is a short video from the BBC Wildlife site of urban foxes in London that have been trained to sit on command.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/life/Red_Fox#p00tv4zd

The Importance of Careful Measurements

The Grade 3 the students start the year learning how to make a range of careful measurements .  They measure solids and liquids using a range of tools to measure properties from linear to volume and temperature.  These kinds of practices are the foundation to building a real data set from which the class can begin to trace the actual patterns of the world.  They are also fun.

 It is fun to measure the temperature is on a foggy day.

And it is a chance to get to use new and interesting tools such as graduated cylinders.

All this attention to careful and accurate measuring has made me think about a couple of recent stories about some remarkable and very precise measurements that have been in the news recently.  The annual announcements about the Nobel prizes have just come out.   This year the Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to two scientists who developed new ways to study individual quantum particles without damaging them.

Did you know that one of the two scientists, the American scientist Dr. David Wineland, works at the National Institute of Standards and Technology?  I didn't even know we had a national center for standards! - but of course, it makes sense. We need one.  When I read the article in the New York Times  - I knew that I had to share this announcement with the Grade 3 students.  Recently we have been discussing why it might be important to have a standard unit of measure.

Here is what the New York Times had to say about Dr. Wineland's research "Dr. Wineland said that much of the motivation for his work over the years came from the need for better and better clocks. 'Historically,' he said in an interview with the Nobel committee, 'when we have better clocks, we have better navigation.' "

"Dr. Wineland’s work has focused on the material side of where matter meets light. His prize is the fourth Nobel awarded to a scientist associated with the National Institute of Standards and Technology over the past 15 years for work involving the trapping and measuring of atoms. Dr. Wineland and his colleagues trap charged beryllium atoms, or ions, in an electric field and cool them with specially tuned lasers so that they are barely moving, which is another way of saying they are very, very cold.

NIST physicist and Nobel Prize-winner David Wineland adjusts an ultraviolet laser beam used to manipulate ions in a high-vacuum apparatus containing an "ion trap." These devices have been used to demonstrate the basic operations required for a quantum computer.

 The photo above is from a great blog post from NPR

"Some of the measurements may be a bit hard to wrap your head around, but for even the most seemingly useless measurement, there's a practical use.

That's where the really precise clock comes into play. Ever wonder how GPS works?

'The fact that they have highly accurate and synchronized clocks on board [the satellites] is the crux of how GPS works,' says Andrew Novick, an electrical engineer at NIST.

'If they were off by hundreds of nanoseconds from each other then the whole thing would fall apart,' he says.

If you are wondering about the elementary science curriculum we are using -   many of the lesson plans are based on the FOSS Measurement curriculum module -(which is also a great resource for math lessons for Grades 3 and 4 as well) - of course our measurements not only take place in the science room but we do lots of measuring outdoors as well.

As we are learning more about the types and names of plants in our observation area it is also important to include scale on our notebook drawings.

Most recently students are learning how to measure liquids using metric units for volume and capacity.

Accurate measurements is a team effort because it is important to check and double check each measurement before the recorder writes it down on the data sheet.

It is important to get down level with the liquid to make sure the reading is correct.

In addition, first thing every morning the Meteorologists in Grade 3 are also outside taking careful and accurate weather data including the temperature in both Fahrenheit and Celsius - but more about that in an upcoming post.....

An Unusual Author Visit and a Well-Deserved Award

Jacqueline Barber - Associate Director of the Lawrence Hall of Science at the University of California, Berkeley

We are very fortunate at the American School in London–  every year we have several wonderful children’s book authors come for a visit.   (One of my favorites was Kate DiCamillo – author of the wonderful book Because of Winn-Dixie).

But recently, we had a rather unusual author visiting in the Lower School.  For one thing this person was the author of non-fiction books.   Jacqueline Barber has written include a number of science books which are part of the reading for the 2^nd grade science unit called Designing Mixtures   One of these books is called Jess Makes Hair Gel and it is often one of the students' favorites.  (You can read a description of the book in the early post titled Building Smart Students).

As a result, many of the Grade 3 students were familiar with her books when Jacquey Barber came to ASL for a visit a few weeks ago.  She was able to spend time with both  John O’Toole and Jenna Laslocky’s classes.  She spent some of the time discussing her books and answering questions from the students and then she helped them as they continued making their observations and measurements of the weather and the plants and insects in the Lower School courtyard. 

But, writing cool children's science books is only a very small part of her job.  Most of the time she is busy managing a large curriculum research and development group because she is the Associate Director of the Lawrence Hall of Science at the University of California, Berkeley and Director of its Curriculum Center.  So, having her visit for a day was a very unique opportunity.  This rare chance to spend time with her was only possible because Jacquey was on her way back to San Francisco traveling back from the conference of the International Society for Design and Development in Education (ISDDE) which was held this fall in Holland.

At the conference she was awarded an “Eddie”!  So we were able to celebrate a very well deserved award with her.

"The International Society for Design and Development in Education (ISDDE) recently announced the winner of the organization’s fifth annual design awards, known as “the Eddies,” to recognize excellence in design of educational products and materials in science or mathematics. The 2012 award winner and recipient of a $10,000 prize is Jacqueline Barber, Associate Director of the Lawrence Hall of Science at the University of California, Berkeley, for  leadership of the design of Seeds of Science/Roots of Reading. Seeds of Science/Roots of Reading is a curriculum developed through a rigorous process to produce innovative materials with great demonstrated impact on students, teachers, and educational designers around the world."

You can read the whole announcement here.

Shape of Life in Art and Science

Recently, one of the Grade 4 science classes had a wonderful opportunity to go up to the high school and visit with one of Jenny Thomas'  art classes.   

It all started with an email message that I received from Jenny Thomas in the high school art department.  She wrote "Jodi Warren was showing some prospective parents through the art studios today and noticed I had dozens of jars of preserved animals from the science department in the classroom for students to draw. In fact we are doing huge, A1 size wax and ink drawings. She told me about the spider drawings you were doing with your grade 4 class and I got quite excited that just by chance we might try to do some kind of sharing activity or even just an observation with our high school and lower school children."

We are at a very exciting time at the moment, with students adding coloured inks to the wax crayon and watching the wax repel the liquid whilst making the huge drawings come alive."

I wrote her back immediately and said that I would love to bring my students up to visit her class. "We are focused on invertebrates at the moment - both molluscs and arthropods (insects/spiders vs. snails) - so they would be very interested in learning about how you and your students are using symmetry in your work - as well as the techniques that you are using in your wax/ink drawings."

So, the next morning we went up to visit and see what was happening in HS art.   We discovered that Ms. Thomas' students were closely observing several of the same animals that we had been studying in the last month.   We had a wonderful time and we are hoping that we can have some more visits in the coming months.  We would love to have the HS art students come down to our lower school science room and help us observe and draw some of the animals we have been studying.   The lower school science room has most of live critters in the school so we have a great resource to share with the art students as well. 

Learning to be Naturalists

In Grade 3 students have been working on taking notes based on careful observations and measurements.   During the month of September the students are practicing making accurate measurements of length using the metric units of centimeters and meters.  That includes measuring the height of each child in the class and measuring other interesting objects and animals around the science room. 

 But, careful observations are also central to scientific understanding.  As part of our science lessons we have been making weather and nature observations in the courtyard area adjacent to the Grade 3 classrooms.  After making the first set of observations we read a book about the observations that one child might make in visiting one location in the neighborhood over the course of several months.  

My Nature Notebook

My Nature Notebook shows how a small spot on the forest floor, where things grow, die, and decompose, changes over several months, and what a child's notebook recording those changes looks like. This book demonstrates the importance of careful and repeated observations, and of measurements, drawings, and detailed notes, in making good inferences about the nature and cause of changes. My Nature Notebook models careful observation and note taking, and also provides students with experience reading tables, and making inferences.

Through out the year, Grade 3 students will be heading outside to make observations through the changing seasons.   Recording observations is the foundation for learning about the natural world and all the students have chosen a small spot in the Lower School courtyard area to observe.  After just two visits they are already noticing many changes and noticing things that they had never realized were just outside their door before.

More on Molluscs

In Grade 4 science the students have started the year observing some common animals and thinking about what it means to talk about relatedness.  So, they have spent some time looking closely at two kinds of land snails we have in the science room.  We have both the large African snails and some common English garden snails. 

During one of our recent classes the fire alarm sounded and we were out of the classroom for 15 minutes or so.   When we got back we found that the snails had ventured out to explore around the notebooks and down the table legs.  So, some of the students had to be very inventive to be able to finish writing their observations while the snails chewed away at the paper in the notebooks.   

Here are some recent observations from Gr 4 student notebooks -

Starting school - at a snail's pace

It is the beginning of a new school year - that second moment during the calendar year for new beginnings and fresh horizons. 

But, this year I am trying to constantly remind myself to go slow - to take our time in developing our routines and patterns so that they are clear and easy for everyone to follow.  

It is so tempting to rush into getting started with all the great new lessons, curriculum and notebooks.  But, the extra time at the beginning of the year spent making sure that everyone knows each other and knows the class routines makes everything else go so much better in the following months.

Last week as I was setting up the room one of the African Snails pushed off the lid to their container and went for a wander.  The first time it was out roaming around over night and it left this trail….

So, it was easy to find in the morning.   The second time it got out was during the day and I turned around and saw this……

Which I thought was a great "Getting ready for school" picture to share with the students.    But, watching the snail make its leisurely pace around the table and over the pencils reminded me of a wonderful book.    

Sound of a Wild Snail Eating – by Elisabeth Bailey

Here is the blurb about the book

"While an illness keeps her bedridden, Elisabeth Bailey watches a wild snail that has taken up residence in a terrarium alongside her bed. She enters the rhythm of life of this mysterious creature, and comes to a greater understanding of her own confined place in the world. In a work that beautifully demonstrates the rewards of closely observing nature, she shares the inspiring and intimate story of her close encounter with Neohelix albolabris a common woodland snail. Intrigued by the snail's world from its strange anatomy to its mysterious courtship activities she becomes a fascinated and amused observer of the snail's curious life. The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating is an affirmation of the healing power of nature, revealing how much of the world we miss in our busy daily lives, and how truly magical it is. A remarkable journey of survival and resilience, The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating shows how a small part of the natural world can illuminate our own human existence and deepen our appreciation of what it means to be fully alive.

Elisabeth Tova Bailey's essays and short stories have been published in the Missouri Review, Northwest Review, and the Sycamore Review. Her work has received several Pushcart Prize nominations, and the essay on which this book is based received a notable essay listing in Best American Essays. She lives in Maine in the United States."

If you go to her website 

you will find a video - watch it when you need to take a break, pause for a moment and remember to breath.  Or if you just want to hear what it sounds like when a wild snail is eating.  

Pebbles, Sand & Silt

As I mentioned in my very first post on this blog - in the youngest grade (K1)  we will start the year with explorations of plants and gardening….but with the kindergarten students who are in K2 we will begin the year studying earth materials…pebbles, rock, sand, and clay.  

Who doesn't love earth materials?  …all those wonderful things to hold, squeeze, explore and observe.  

Some of our lessons are based on a  FOSS module for Grades 1-2 called Pebbles, Sand, and Silt This Module consists of four sequential investigations, each designed to introduce concepts in earth science. The investigations provide experiences that heighten students' awareness of rocks as earth materials and natural resources. They will come to know rocks by many names and in a variety of sizes. Pebbles and sand are the same material—just different sizes.

We have modified some of the lessons from this FOSS module on pebbles, sand and silt for younger students and we have added in lots of creative arts time with explorations and creations made of clay, sand and gravel and there are some wonderful field trips to learn about and explore soil and it is just a wonderful way to start the fall with observing, describing and exploring. 

If you are person who loves rocks - loves to hold pebbles in your hand - I have a book to recommend to you - 

The Planet in a Pebble: A journey into Earth's deep history by Jan Zalasiewicz

"This is the story of a single pebble. It is just a normal pebble, as you might pick up on holiday - on a beach in Wales, say. Its history, though, carries us into abyssal depths of time, and across the farthest reaches of space. This is a narrative of the Earth's long and dramatic history, as gleaned from a single pebble. It begins as the pebble-particles form amid unimaginable violence in distal realms of the Universe, in the Big Bang and in supernova explosions and continues amid the construction of the Solar System. Jan Zalasiewicz shows the almost incredible complexity present in such a small and apparently mundane object. Many events in the Earth's ancient past can be deciphered from a pebble: volcanic eruptions; the lives and deaths of extinct animals and plants; the alien nature of long-vanished oceans; and transformations deep underground, including the creations of fool's gold and of oil. Zalasiewicz demonstrates how geologists reach deep into the Earth's past by forensic analysis of even the tiniest amounts of mineral matter. Many stories are crammed into each and every pebble around us. It may be small, and ordinary, this pebble - but it is also an eloquent part of our Earth's extraordinary, never-ending story."

A couple of quotes may give you a sense of the story….

"With some of these minerals, one can build quite specific histories.  Zircon is unusually eloquent in this respect.  It is zirconium silicate- that is, a mineral combination of the elements zirconium, silicon and the near-ubiquitious oxygen. But, it also shelters other elements, elements that otherwise find it hard to find a mineral home……But, this fragment of history is, to some extent, a sideshow, Zircon's main contribution is to allow students of the Earth - or of a pebble - to navigate, with incomparable precision, through the fourth dimension, through the deep time of Earth history.  It does this courtesy of a transmutation, a find of natural alchemy that the medieval scholars never dreamed of - even as it was continually happening under their noses (albeit in the realm of the very small), while those ancestors of today's scientists made ever more frantic and fruitless attempts to conjure its action to make alchemical gold.  The key here is zircon's hospitality to uranium."

I have to pause to say  - I LOVE this line -  "The key here is zircon's hospitality to uranium."

And this --- " Before any great expedition, there is a gathering of the forces - of the clans, the troops, the mercenaries - from near and far, by various routes.  Once met, they will then travel en masse, their fortunes from then to be bound together for good or ill……Sediment particles of the future pebble were gathering, around the shores of Avalonia, in the Silurian Period, for a journey that would take them to a resting place,  one where they would not see the light of day for something over 400 million years."    

I can't tell you what happens next - that is only as far as I have gotten in the book so far - but don't you want to know the rest of the story?