Plants

We recently completed our science unit on plants! We learned all about the parts of a plant and what they do. We learned that the roots of a plant hold it in the ground and also act like straws to soak up all of the water and nutrients in the soil. The stem helps to keep the plant tall and also brings the water from the roots up to the flower. Leaves are used to take in sunlight, while flowers hold seeds inside of them.

We also learned about the life cycle of a plant. We learned that from a seed a plant will begin to sprout and grow roots. It will then begin growing, producing leaves and eventually a flower. Inside of the flower are more seeds, which are dropped as the flower begins to die. These new seeds start the whole process over again!

For our unit, we made plant models out of paper towel tubes, grew different kinds of flowers in our grow light and then donated them to a local assisted living facility, and grew beans in plastic bags.

Our favorite experiment where the beans in the bags. We did this by adding wet paper towel into a Ziploc bag with four beans inside. We did not add dirt, since we wanted to see what was happening as seeds grow underground. A roll of staples across the middle of the bag created what we called the "upstairs beans, "and the "downstairs beans."  We did this to see which beans would grow faster: the beans that were at the bottom where more water had collected, or the beans across the middle that relied on only the damp paper towel. We then placed our bags on the windows to see what will happen.

We are happy to say that we successfully grew beans without dirt! While not everyone's beans grew, we all agreed that as long as a few bags changed, we would all be able to see the plants grow in the "invisible dirt."

After a little more than two weeks, here are our results:

This bag showed us how many roots had come from the beans. We noticed that these roots all came from an "upstairs bean," and it's roots had grown down to the bottom of the bag to collect as much water as possible.

This bag was an excellent example of a bean that had opened and began growing a sprout.

This sprout was almost growing out of the bag! It has even begun growing leaves!

Finally, here is a bag that shows the roots, sprouts, and leaves all in one bag!

We had a lot of fun doing this experiment! It turns out, the "upstairs beans" grew much better than the "downstairs beans!" Most of the ones on the bottom rotted in the excess water! Guess that goes to show you that you should never over water your plants!