This week my children and I are studying fruits and vegetables – how they grow, the difference between a fruit and a vegetable, why we need to eat them, how our bodies use them, and more!
I’ve had a lot of fun putting this fruits and vegetables unit study together, and I’d love to share parts of it with you!
Today, we did something a bit out of the ordinary: I devoted a whole morning to science.
Oh if y’all only knew me at all, you would know that is not my typical routine!
I am a box checker, so it’s a bit hard for me to break out of my normal realm and push all of the phonics, math, and grammar to the afternoon.
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No one was more shocked than my children! All I heard this morning was:
This is the best morning EVER!
Wait. You mean we get to do science the whole morning?!
Let’s do some more!
Mama, you are just the best teacher.
Okay, I’ll admit that the last statement was my favorite. 🙂 Being a homeschool mom is so often a very thankless job, so a compliment now and then is a good shot in the arm!
The three activities we worked on today: reading our first book on vegetables, planting seeds, and starting our nature journals.
Reading About Fruits and Vegetables
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I checked out a multitude of books from our library, and purchased a few from Amazon for this unit study. We started with a book about vegetables today:
The Vegetables We Eat by Gail Gibbons
Books by Gail Gibbons never disappoint, and this is no exception! We learned how vegetables are categorized, the difference between perennials and annuals, and more. This book was packed with great information!
Tomorrow, we are reading these additional books by Gail Gibbons. These three will make up the spines of our unit study.
The Fruits We Eat by Gail Gibbons
From Seed to Plant by Gail Gibbons
I have many other books planned (so stay tuned for that post!), but these are the 3 books that we will read several times each.
Planting Seeds
I planned for us to observe beans germinating and sprouting, which can take several days. Since we need to observe the results each day, this activity needed to start on the first day of our study.
After researching a bit, I decided to use the Sprout and Grow Window from Educational Insights. I wanted the kids to be able to see the roots growing in the soil.
I was pretty pleased with the kit, despite the actual container being a bit wobbly in the green feet. I have to remind my kiddos to only pick it up by the clear plastic piece so it won’t fall over.
Watching the Wonder Soil absorb the water was so neat! Also, the directions were quite clear.
Plus, it’s reusable, which will come in handy when we study seeds again next year.
The container was sitting in a warm windowsill, so the soil appears white from condensation.
Nature Journals
Even though the Sprout and Grow Kit came with a place to record seed observations, I thought it was time for my kiddos to start a real nature journal. They’re simply using a cheap composition book that I got on sale for 50 cents each at the beginning of the school year.
I’ll describe in detail in a later post how we’re using these nature journals on a weekly basis.
Today, my kiddos recorded our seed window, and depending upon their ability, they wrote several sentences or paragraphs about our project and their predictions.
My 5 year old drew a picture of the seed window and my almost 7 year old wrote a sentence.
My 9 year old wrote 3-4 sentences and my almost 11 year old wrote a couple of paragraphs, including his predictions for when the seeds would germinate and sprout.
For this particular activity, my children will record their seed observations each day in their nature journals.
At a later date, we might grow bean seeds in ziploc bags and record our observations on the studying seeds mini-book. I’ve already printed the vocabulary seed pages for us to use later in the week.
And that was plenty for today! We will work on our studies a bit more tomorrow, so I’ll give you a sneak peek tomorrow evening.
I have so many things planned to share with you this week about our fruits and vegetables unit study, so make sure you check back each day!
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[…] case you missed the first post about our fruits and vegetables unit study, these are the spine books that we’re reading. While we will read a variety of other books, […]