Sunday, June 9, 2019

First Grade Botany 101: Thinking Like Botanists

What does it look like for first graders to take Botany 101?

Asking good questions


Setting up our individual experiments


Checking our experiments for 10 days


Some experiments were done sooner than others.
"Look what happened to my plant in the freezer!"


Taking care of our experimental plants.


We've learned that plants make their own food through the process of photosynthesis. But what would happen if you give a plant more sugar, as in one sugar cube per day?

Sugar cube hypothesis: I think it will create more leaves because sugar is inside the stem.
Results: It is not good to feed it sugar.

Each student did two experiments.
Here we are comparing our results.

Experiment #1 was the control plant and #2 was fertilized by our red wigglers worm fertilizer! 

Thank you, Ms Jenn, for showing us how to keep them alive and wiggling!

Analysis by a first grader!

Final analysis: most students agreed that:

  • plant number 8, the plant that was talked to, grew the most because talking produces more carbon dioxide, something plants need to survive.

  • plant number 13, the plant that was put in the microwave, grew the least because it survived only 30 seconds. Plants cannot get that hot. 


Proof: young students exposed to real life, hands-on, inquiry based, STEM activities can and do think like botanists. 


Each student gets an A+ in Botany 101



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First Grade-isms

A first grader recites 200+ digits of pi!