Botany - Week one

We stated our botany unit this week. Our first port of call was to study dirt, we read the 'Jump into Science Dirt' book - it is a basic level but gave a good starting point. We explored the different types of sediment,

looked at them under a microscope

and tested which was the best at absorbing water.

Then we moved onto seeds - we looked at the structure of a seed (booklet from Montessori Print Shop) and dissected a seed.

don't know if you can spot the epicotyl (two little leaves) in this photo but the girls spotted it and it lead to a great discussion on monocot and dicot plants.

We also looked at the life cycle of a seed.

(from Montessori Print Shop), which included building a seed viewer from an old CD case so we can watch how it grows.


We then looked at the needs of a plant and the effect of salinity on growth.

While the older girls wrote up their note book pages, Rose worked on sorted seeds by type.