Out of My Comfort Zone

Seemingly out of the blue, we got notice from our enrichment group that it had been dissolved.  We have been involved with PEP since Caleb was in K-4 and because of the nature of the group - the moms all know each other, the families all know each other - we felt very connected there.  So it was more than just disappointing that it could end so suddenly.  The reason given was not very defined.  I'm sure there are bigger and dearer things than PEP that have been dissolved in the process and while I'm obviously curious, I know that some things are none of my business.

Over the last few weeks some of the families began to organize a new group at a different  - much farther away - location.  All along I had not wanted to rush into a different group (there are many here) because I wanted to see if something could work out.   There are multiple things we are losing by this move, but my first and biggest pause was the drive.  It is what I sweepingly refer to as "out in west Kendall" - as if that were some distant galaxy.  I do my best never to go there.  But, they asked if I would teach the classes I had planned to teach at PEP and I decided I would.  The balance will be that we won't take the 9am class and I won't teach Botany (More about that later.)

A part of me feels like being bothered by the location is petty, but it does bother me.  It's one of those paper clip locations that you have to pass by and turn around to get to it.  The fastest route is by the turnpike, but I dislike driving on the turnpike and avoid it.  It's in a warehouse district that is industrial and ugly.  And in short, it just isn't my neighborhood.  Did I mention I never go there?

Well that is sort of not true.  The skating rink is not far from there and we've been there a few times this summer, but only on Saturday mornings.  The big girls went to a music theater camp in that area a few weeks ago.

Natalie - Live!  Onstage!

But while they enjoyed the camp, taking them convinced me to back out of another program the same organization was hosting at that location.

What I mean to say is, I don't go there if there is an option even a little bit closer.

But here we go - we are going to join this co-op at least for this year.  It will be smaller, it will be nothing like it was, but I think it will still have some good points.

I am going to teach the class on China like I had planned, but after driving by and casing out the location, I felt like Botany was not happening there.  At PEP there were lots of trees and a lot of land.  This new place there is a lot of asphalt.  So, I'm sure another person could modify the class to be all indoors, but I was really not feeling it, so the coordinators encouraged me to find another topic and immediately I remember Lewis and Clark and our home-made docu-drama.  I don't know how it will all work out, but there is no precedent, so it maybe it will be fine.  I got a Ken Burns book about Lewis and Clark and it is so interesting, I'm really glad to learn more.

In conclusion - our original homeschool group was more than 20 years old, but it was a fragile thing and I was naive to think it would always be around.  But, we aren't really alone and who knows what opportunities we may discover.

Cats vs. Birds

Election Day is fast approaching!  Not the one you think I mean either - it's almost time to elect the Best Pet in the My America class.  Today the class made nominations and the candidates are Cats and Birds.  These two pets are good choices for this class because the characteristics they considered most important in a pet were things like being small enough to hold, being hand fed, and being cute and cuddly.  One girl suggested a great pet should be "fancy" and I'm not exactly sure what that means, but a couple of other kids agreed.

So Birds vs Cats it is!  Here are some of our campaign posters:

This one is Natalie's

What would be your vote?

Day 1 in My America

Our annual "back to PEP" picture - I am learning that a picture with 4 smiling children is not something I always have time or patience to obtain!

Week 1 of my class: "My America" was about learning the national anthem and Uncle Sam.  Actually, my big objective was that the kids understand that there are a lot of symbols for America and that not all of them are visual.  I found a fabulous link to picture based lyrics for The Star Spangled Banner and the kids seemed to sing the song pretty well!  They also loved the Uncle Sam masks. 

Natalie :)

The class really went well and I can't think of anything I'd really change if I teach this class again.

Natalie has one other class called "Planting a Seed" - obviously botany.  Annalise has an elections class and a Lego class.  The Lego class is taught by the same person who taught her Great Artists class last year - and a really amazing teacher!  Caleb has three classes:  an elections class, Apologia anatomy (that is, the same curriculum as the botany class I taught), and a drawing techniques class.  He didn't like any of them the first day and they all have homework.  The girls only have two classes because we opted not to take ceramics this year - I'm still trying to figure out where to put our projects from last year!

My America Take 2

Since it is an election year, our homeschool enrichment group is again offering elections themed classes to all the grade levels. I am teaching the class for the 1st and 2nd grade group (Natalie's class).  I am working through all the crafts, trying to tweak them a little to make them easier.  Somehow, my syllabus from last time only included 11 weeks and I can't figure out if I made an error or if we actually missed a week due to weather.  So I added a song and craft I did not use last time, these are Uncle Sam masks:

Annalise helped me make the mask two different ways and we'd like some input as to which one looks better. 

We are leaning toward the first design.

Obviously I could offer both options, but with limited time and attention spans, I am not sure I want to do that!

Botany Week 12

Our Fall PEP semester has come to its end.  For our final Botany class, we did an art project - true to form, it did not go as I planned or envisioned, and that is ok.

My plan was for the children to create a set of thank you cards decorated with leaf prints.  This is a cool thing to do and very easy.  You color the bottom of a leaf with markers and then just use it as you would a stamp.  You can reprint the same leaf in multiple colors.  You can also color the leaf with a rainbow of colors.   I gave each child 5 cards, 5 envelopes, and a bunch of leaves.  (I also brought extra markers because at this point in the semester, more than half of the kids have lost more than half of their supplies.)

This is a sample one I made.

What happened was that a few kids did exactly what I suggested, a few kids did something similar to what I suggested, and a few kids just did whatever they wanted to do.  I did not intervene much!  Ultimately they did not understand that I meant for them to make a set to give as a gift, so many of them wrote cards to each other or for their family members and a few kids made cards for me, which I did not expect and appreciated very much.  Would I do the same craft again?  Yes, but only if I don't find something better.

Here is our final seed collection - the bottom are a few of the "specimens" collected last week and hastily taped to the poster.  If I teach this class again, I will be more aggressive at letting the parents know about the seed collection.

Hopefully, I will post some pictures of the art projects Annalise and Natalie made in their Great Artists class.  They really learned a lot in the class and have a very nice portfolio of work from it.  Their favorite class was Folk Dance (Caleb takes it in the spring!  All of the moms of boys were uncertain about it, but it seems all of us signed our sons up for it, so at least none of them will be the lone boy!)  The girls also have a pretty impressive collection of ceramic projects - another class Caleb will take in the spring.

Botany Week 11

Our focus this week was trees.  The objective was to become acquainted with several types of trees on the PEP campus.  Last time, I created an elaborate scavenger hunt, divided the kids into teams, assigned each team something to bring back from 6 different trees, and gave them all maps to find the trees.  Naturally, they had trouble reading the map, recognizing the trees, finding the things I asked for, etc.  So I knew that had to go, but I wanted to do something that would involve the trees.  I knew I needed to simplify things and spoon feed a little.

Nearest tree: Gumbo Limbo.   Distant left: Banana trees, Bald Cypress, Royal Poinciana.  Distant right: Live Oak and Black Olive

I looked online at lots of ideas and found a website where a mom made clue jars for trees in her yard and gave them to her precocious 4 year old.  I thought it might work for us, so I obtained 6 empty bottles, filled them with leaves and sticks and other plant matter from the trees and then filled them with water - because that made the contents very clear and slightly magnified.  I tagged the bottles with the tree names.

I also drew a map of the campus and only drew in the trees that we were going to visit.  Originally, I thought we'd also do a matching game to learn an extra fact about each tree, but scrapped the idea as too much - however I'll get back to that in a minute.  I also made a card for each kid that said to get a leaf, twig, flower, berry, etc. from a certain tree.  And I brought little tags to attach to the leaves, twigs, etc.   Finally, I had each kid take 6 pieces of paper and a peeled crayon and make a bark rubbing on each tree. And I thought a matching game was too much!

So here is how that went down:  We met in class and talked about how trees are beneficial.  I explained our tree hunt, the bottles, the specimen cards, and the bark rubbings.  I had kids peel crayons.  Then they packed everything in their folders and we went out.  The bottles were only useful to a few kids - but they did like the bottles very much - and by the time we were at the last two trees, no one needed them anyway.

As we found each tree, I chose a student to put a leaf shaped post it on the tree to label it.

The bark rubbings were pointless.  None of them look any different from another (although the trees had very different types of bark).

The specimen cards were kind of blah.  Some kids did as they were told, other kids lost theirs, once we got back we didn't have time to tag the leaves, twigs, flowers, berries, etc.

It should come as no surprise, in my class of over-enriched, energy filled 8-10 year-olds, most of them climbed most of the trees.

Banyan Tree

BUT, I think the kids left knowing that there were lots of different types of trees on campus and the names of at least 4 of the 6.  The bottle idea is cute, but better suited for a smaller group.  Given the chance to do it again, I would keep the spirit of the clue bottles, but tweak it somehow and do the match game I mentioned instead of the leaf, twig, etc. collection and bark rubbing.  The book also has a lesson on how to estimate the height of a tree, which I would have included if I'd had time.

Once again, my volunteer commended on how spirited the class is!  I have a half class left to go, we're going to do an art project, I'm not even going to make a lesson plan.  And even though I won't be sad to see the semester come to an end, I'm already thinking of what I might teach next fall.

Botany Week 10

This week our focus was stems.  Last time, I had the kids build a model stem out of bundles of straws and floral tape, complete with fake flowers.  This time, I found an easier way!

We discussed the visible functions of the stem - support and flexibility - briefly, but most of the class focused on the inner parts of the stem.  I kept it simple - just xylem and phloem.  Xylem and phloem can be compared to veins and arteries.  They are both vascular tubes, but they do different jobs.  Xylem carries water up from the roots and phloem transports sugar down from the leaves.  Instead of making models of this, we made a page for their lab book.  First they drew a kind of ugly plant with all the basic parts - roots, stem, and leaves.   In the stem we left a wide space.  In the space, we taped two straws and labeled one straw xylem and one phloem.  Then we put label tags on two pipe cleaners and labeled one water and one sugar.  We inserted the pipe cleaners in the straws to symbolize the water and sugar that flow through the tubes.  I have copied a lot of things off pinterest this year, but this one I made up myself!

Next we briefly discussed woody stems and how they differ from green (herbaceous) stems.  I had the kids make a "Me" tree - this seemed like a pretty preschool project and I did it mostly because I couldn't find a worksheet I used last time.  They wrote on the back of a paper plate "A _______ Tree" (their name went in the blank), on the top they colored the bumpy edge brown for the bark and made rings in the middle to represent their own ages.

I did not expect any of them not to know about how tree rings show a tree's age (and they all did), but it was something to do while we talked about things that might affect a tree's growth over the years and the fact that trees in tropical climates have less defined rings because they grow pretty much year round.


Yea botany!  Yea 1 1/2 classes left!  Since I am the 3rd class, my last class is interrupted by the annual Thanksgiving Feast!

Botany Week 9

This week we moved down to the roots.  I know I said last time that I would focus on one main thing, but roots had 3 main things and I am just going to let the kids pick which part to remember.

The first fact about roots that we discussed is that they help prevent erosion.  I did this last time - you take two plastic bottles and cut one side out of them, fill one with dirt and put a strip of sod or plant plants in the other one.  (I used sod.)  When you set them up tilted and pour water on top, they will drain out the hole into a cup.  The water from the sod bottle is almost clear, while the dirt bottle looks like gritty coffee.  Point taken.

The second fact is that roots absorb water and, more specifically, the root hairs do most of the water absorbing.  I spouted some radish seeds on Tuesday and by today they had grown about 1-2 cm long roots with feathery root hairs all over.  The kids looked at them with magnifying glasses and then I told them they could keep the sprouts and plant them at home.

The third fact was that there are two main types of roots - fibrous roots and tap roots.  We made a page for our lab books by making roots out of yarn.  These came out really cool and everyone did a good job, which is really amazing because when I did a trial of this page, I shook my head and said, no way will this work!  Mine looked cool, and I really wanted to do it, but I had low expectations.  I looked over my lesson plan, cut out another thing I did last time and decided to go for it.  Definitely the right choice.

This week has had A LOT of other distractions and this class was struggling to make one of my top priorities.  Actually most of the semester has felt like this!  But this week was especially so.  To have all the academic things work well this week feels like a bit of grace.

I still have not gotten a handle on the wiggly, chatty kids.  Naturally, this is the sort of thing that gets worse if you don't get a good grip on it right away.  Part of me is just enduring it until it is over.  During class, I will go through waves of having everyone's attention and then losing them all over again.  Today I think they were especially hyper and even though I had an awesome volunteer, it was a struggle.  I wish I knew better how to manage them, not only for my own benefit, but because it is just not fair to the kids who sit quietly and work hard.

Botany Week 8

This week we expanded our study of leaves to learn about transpiration, which is pretty cool.  Plants transpire, which is not terribly different from how we perspire, except what they transpire is just water.  Interestingly, even though plants need a great deal of water, they use very little in photosynthesis and most of it (90-99%, the sources I used did not fully agree) is put right back out through the stomata of the leaves as water vapor.

This can be more easily understood with a very simple science experiment:  Put a clear plastic bag over a few leaves and seal the opening.  Wait an hour and there will be a mist of water in the bag.  Wait a few hours and the mist will thicken into droplets.  Wait a day and there will be a measurable amount of water in the bag.

I arrived at PEP early to set up a bag on a tree and that worked just as planned.  I had also planned to set up a bag at the start of my class, but that did not work out because the very moment our class started, it rained.  Still rain here is nearly always a brief event and once it stopped, I took the class out to see my first bag and to collect a leaf.

During our rain delay, we talked about how leaves change color...and how they don't do that here.  Actually, some trees do change color in Florida, but it is much later, much less dramatic, and mostly in North Florida.  Most of the types of trees that change color do not grow well here and local trees are commonly palms.  I think the notable exceptions in our particular neighborhood are the Royal Poinciana, which grows like a weed here, but is from Hawaii, and the Live Oak, which is considered a semi-evergreen, that is, it's leaves may stay green until they fall off.  And probably here they do.  We do see a lot of fallen leaves as the dry seasons ends, but they are all brown.  We also have lots of sea-grape, gumbo limbo, banyan, slash pine, and mangrove.

After the kids collected  a leaf, we used the UF/IFAS Illustrated Leaf Glossary to classify the parts of the leaf and then glued the leaf to a page and labeled it's parts.  It was pretty simple compared to some of the lessons we've done before!

I took the suggestion from the Apologia book to have the kids consider different scenarios for what happens to an individual leaf and had them draw a comic strip on a long thin piece of paper.  They seemed to really like it - several kids wanted to read theirs or take it out to show a parent.  It did not accomplish anything particular to Botany, but as a language arts person, I liked how it crossed the spectrum of education to let the kids think creatively.  Here is a super crummy cell phone picture of the extra large comic I made as an example:

And I sent each kid away with a zip top gallon bag to do the transpiration experiment at home over a longer period of time.

My main "take away" this week was that the kids can only add a little new information to subject they already feel familiar with and any new information needs to be somehow attached to something they already understand well.  I did already know that, but tend to forget it!  So in short, this week was one of the more successful classes because we only learned one thing - plants transpire.

Botany Week 7

This week, the lesson was on photosynthesis.  The last time I taught botany, I was worried about it because I had never really understood what photosynthesis was, but as I studied it, I began to find it really interesting, even miraculous.  I still can't claim to fully understand it, but as I prepared for this class, I learned a little more and if they ask me to teach it again, maybe I can add a little more.  It is a complicated, amazing thing and there is no way more than a very basic understanding can be taught to this age group anyway.

Because of my new motto "I'm never sorry I did it early", weeks ago, I made a very large poster board leaf with two layers glued together.  The bottom was not glued down and could be opened to reveal a cross section of the leaf and the bottom layer of stomata -the tiny mouth like holes on the bottom of leaves.

I made smaller paper leaves to match for the students, which they glued the same way to a page for their lab books.  After leading them to add the cross section parts and the stomata, we began to talk about this formula:

Carbon Dioxide + Water + Sunlight = Sugar + Oxygen + Water

All of the children knew that plants and animals exchange air and most of them had at least heard of photosynthesis and chlorophyll.  They each had 6 small arrows to match my 6 larger arrows and we labeled each one for the parts of the above formula and glued them in the part of the leaf where they enter or leave it.

Most of the kids had no understanding of the chemical nature of anything beyond knowing H2O means water and that molecules are small.  I had a printed copy this:

Not so much to teach them what it meant, but to show them that the sugar molecule is so much bigger and more complicated than the water, oxygen, or carbon dioxide - and on the chance that a kid or two would know more about it and would find it interesting.

To further illustrate the chemical nature of photosynthesis, I brought a handful of Legos and quickly assembled a "building" and then broke them apart and built an odd shape.  I hoped to let them understand that plants take one thing, break it into pieces and build something totally different.  I am not sure they understood.

What I do think they understood is that leaves make a kind of sugar to feed the plant.  And since most of them didn't know that before the beginning of class, I think it was a success!

***

At the end of my class, one of the administrators (they call it"the committee" - so a committee member, but actually the one most in charge) came to my class to talk to the kids about our fire drills.  It was a good chance for me to stand in the back of the room and watch someone else instruct this particular group of kids.  She did it masterfully and I was glad to see it!  I hope I can learn from her.  It did encourage me that  when I saw her later she laughed about what a talkative group they are!

Botany Week 6

The main topic of this week's lesson was exploring different methods of seed dispersal.  In anticipation of this lesson, I had been collecting lots of different types of seeds for months.  I even saved a baggie of dandelion tufts from our trip in May.  We do have tuft making plants here, but not the round puffy dandelions.  The ones we have don't blow as nicely and I wasn't sure I'd find any here when I wanted them.  They held up pretty well.

I found an idea on Pinterest to use a symbol from the movie Peter Pan for the 6 main types of seed dispersal:
Peter Pan - seeds that fly without wings (tufts)
Tinkerbell - seeds that fly with wings (samaras)
Captain Hook - seeds dispersed by animals by being hooked onto them
The Crocodile - seeds dispersed by animals through digestion
Pirate Ship - seeds that float (coconuts or mangrove - there is a lot of mangrove here)
Cannon - seeds that pop out, that is the plant releases seeds mechanically

I made big cards with the pictures and little pictures for the kids. 

They labeled their pages and sectioned off the pages to have a space for drawing and identifying the seed dispersal of some seeds I gave them in a baggie.

That took a while!  To wind things up, I had some extra samaras and they had a contest to see who could drop their samaras onto a target on the floor.  It turned out to be much harder than they expected, but they all seemed to like it.

I continue to have problems keeping the attention of some of the children.  I don't know if I can blame it on academic overload or if I just don't know how to manage them.  These same children never seem to have their basic class supplies either - something I am having a hard time being patient about.  They are supposed to have colored pencils specifically for my class, but only about half of them do.  That's annoying, but somehow not as exasperating as when they don't have a regular pencil or scissors.

Botany Week 5

I went into this week with generous time estimates for each part of my lesson plan.  I did not want a repeat of last week!  Everything fit fine this week, however, the ancy kids are not becoming less ancy.  I did move a couple of them closer to me and that helped a little bit.

This week's lesson was on pollination and the relationship between plants and their pollinators.  In preparing, I was looking for the right place to go into this subject since many kids have been familiar with the functions of bees and butterflies since preschool.  I decided to focus on defining nectar and nectaries (the parts of the plant that makes nectar) and talk about interdependence.  We also did a very brief exercise to illustrate wind pollination - I made a card with paper grass and sprinkled flour on it.  I had 3 kids blow on it to disperse the flour.

The Apologia book goes into great detail about how bees see flowers and it is very interesting, but I kept bees light and led the kids to make an illustration of a butterfly life cycle for their lab notebooks.

Then we all went outside and planted mini-butterfly gardens in trays I'd saved from cherry tomatoes (lids cut off).  They planted zinnia seeds (nectar plants) and milkweed seeds (host plant).  I am leaving it up to the parents to see if these things grow!

In hindsight, it would have been beneficial to have gone deeper into how vital bees are to our food supply.  I think we did discuss that in the last class I taught.  But that was at 9am and somehow 11:20am can't get that deep!

A few kids brought seeds to add to our seed collection.  I am limiting Caleb to bringing only one each class, but I am also trying to make sure he brings out of the ordinary ones.  He contributed the Red Mangrove Propagule.

Botany Week 4

This week's lesson was a very interactive one.  I was a little too enthusiastic though and could have planned things a little better.  I cannot control that my class is the third one most of the kids have been to that day and that some of their short attention spans have elapsed long before they got to me.  However, I should anticipate that and not try to overdo it.

Our focus this week was the anatomy of a flower.  I had planned to dissect one flower and reconstruct it in playdough.  I did this with the same age group 2 years ago, BUT I had the first hour of the day.  It may not have gone as rosily then as I remember it, but it did not go rosily at all this time.

The flower dissection was actually not bad.  It did take longer than I expected.  I got a bouquet of Alstroemeria at Publix because they have nice sized stamen and because one bunch had more than enough flowers.  I did not consider until too late that Alstroemeria has weird sepals, a wimpy looking carpel, and caps on some of the stamen.  I'm not sure what kind of flower is the best pick for this.  Maybe there is not one.  I had the class use tape last time, but in trials at home, I was happier with glue, so that is what we used.  It was messier and took time to dry, but all in all, I think that was the way to go.

The sepals are the pieces that cover the bud before the flower opens.  Usually they are green and pointed on top.

So with less than half the class left to go, my helper and I passed out the playdough and we began to reconstruct the flower.  I practiced this at home with the kids and thought I had a good system down.  Actually, for about 1/4 of the kids, this was fine - but many of the kids were unable to keep focused on my instructions and it bogged down quickly.  When the boys in the back started making whatever they wanted with the playdough, I just focused on the kids who were paying attention - because we had 5 minutes left and 10 minutes worth of work to do.

Hindsight?  I could have made a printed sheet for each of them that showed the shapes they need to make and they could have made the shapes to fit on the printed ones and then we could have quickly assembled the flowers.  I could have opted for a diagram worksheet.  I could have drawn out the flower dissection so we didn't need a second activity.  Actually, I had hoped to slice up a composite flower to show them for contrast.  That is probably a much better plan. 

Botany Week 3

Today felt a little more relaxed than the first two lessons.  There was much less material to cover.  The objectives were to be able to identify monocots and dicots and to start our class seed collection.

After reviewing, we talked about the results of the sprouting cups experiment.  Several of the kids had good outcomes, a few had left theirs at PEP or forgotten to water it.  One left it in her backpack and it still grew roots!  Here is Caleb's - I think this is the most successful sprouting cup we've ever made!

We moved on from there to dividing angiosperms into two groups - monocots and dicots.  There are many differences between the two groups, but the one we focused on was that monocot leaves have parallel veins and dicot leaves have branching veins.  Then we went out to collect some leaves and flowers.  I gave each kid a checklist with instructions to be sure to find both a monocot and dicot leaf (more than one if possible) and whatever flowers they could find.  I was pretty sure no one would find a monocot flower.  I only found one and not on campus.  They did find several examples of dicot flowers.  The last time I taught botany, it was spring and the campus was well maintained and we couldn't find many flowers.  This time, it has been raining and raining and there were weeds blooming everywhere.

The kids brought their leaves and flowers back and I asked them to sketch them for their notebook.

They worked pretty diligently on their sketches, but some of them copied my example instead of drawing their own leaf.  I realized I need to think in advance how to lead them to do unique work.  I had them divide the paper into three sections and I think if I had asked them to put the real leaves and flowers in the right boxes before drawing them, more of them might have done it that way.

Finally, I brought out a bright neon green posterboard labeled "Our Seed Collection" and told them I wanted them to be on the lookout for seeds and bring them to add to the collection.  I started it off with a pinto bean and a pine cone seed - the two seeds we studied last week.

That was it!  I think they are enjoying the class.  They are a little restless because the first two classes are a lot of academic work and they are tired and ready to run and play, but I've been with this group for a few years now and they have all matured some and handle it pretty well.

Botany Week 2

This week, I hurried into the classroom as soon as the previous class ended and made sure that no tables had more than 5 seats.  Last week they all huddled into two tables and they need more room for this class.  The objectives for this class were to be able to tell the difference between angiosperms and gymnosperms, dissect a bean, and prepare a sprouting cup to take home.

First, we reviewed the terms we learned last week - they are sharp cookies!  I thought the last group was pretty smart, but this class acts all this is "been there, done that."

Once you divide plants into vascular and non-vascular plants, you can further divide the vascular side into spore producing plants and seed producing plants.  There are two types of seed producing plants - angiosperms and gymnosperms.  To illustrate the difference, I brought out two toy vehicles:

Angiosperms have covered seeds - not unlike how your luggage would be in this stylish purple car.

Gymnosperms have exposed (uncovered) seeds - similar to your luggage tossed into the bed of this sweet ride.

To give them another memory peg, I told them that the gymno- in gymnosperm doesn't actually mean uncovered, it means naked.  Would you go the the GYM naked?  NO!  They laughed!

We passed out the magnifying glasses and each child was given a pine cone scale.  They picked the seeds off and looked at them.  That is really all we did with them because I thought I would be pressed for time, but I think we might have had time to sketch them.

Next I gave each child a few soaked pinto beans.  They removed the seed coat and pulled the bean into two pieces.  I did this with 1st graders back in B.C. (Before Caleb).

Cute baby!

The fish shaped piece is the baby plant.  The two (comparatively) big pieces - i.e. most of the bean - is the food the plant needs to sprout.  I brought a lunch box as a visual to help illustrate.  The "fish tail" is actually two leaves that are the first leaves of the plant.  They turn green as the plant grows and eventually fall off.

The kids drew the seed and labeled it for their notebooks:

Some sources called the baby leaves plumule and others epicotyl - the plumule ones labeled the part of the stem beneath the leaves the epicotyl.  We just labeled the leaves as epicotyl and didn't complicate things with the plumule.  But I don't think the scientific names are all the important for 3rd and 4th graders!

Finally, we built these:

Which was less complicated than I expected since most of the class had made them before.  This is one I made in advance.  I stressed the the plants can be moved to the ground after they sprout - a few of the students from my first botany class grew quite a crop of beans from this experiment!