How Does Water Help Plants Grow?

As we came to a conclusion on understanding how water falls from the sky as rain and how this rain water is cleaned to be delivered to our homes, we returned to our wonder wall to see which question we all were most interested in answering next. The children all chose to find out how plants use water to grow. The big question though, was HOW were we going to do this? The children said that we should plant our own seeds and watch them grow. Many of us had different ideas about what plants needed to successfully grow. Some of us thought that we needed a lot of water, some thought that we only needed a little. Others thought plants would grow just fine inside the classroom, whereas others felt it would be better to have them out in the sunlight. So we all made some choices:

• Which seeds will I plant?
• Will I use soil or cotton?
• How much water do I want to pour in?
• Where will I keep my plant, inside or outside?

Each day we have been making observations and taking notes like real scientists. We talked about how scientists learn a lot even when nothing  is happening or if they are not successful the first time. For instance, if nothing has changed from the day before, then we should report that nothing has happened. When asked what we could learn from that, we learn that seeds don't grow in just one day!

Stay tuned for the observation books we are currently creating as we make daily notes on the changes, or lack of changes happening to our seeds!

Special thanks to Aina M. for being our photographer during this learning engagement!