Nature Study: The Plant Kingdom

It’s time for our 12 Months of Montessori Series and today I would like to share with you our study of the Plant Kingdom. Last year we worked on the Animal Kingdom and it was a huge success.  It helped Mavi understand how the animals are grouped according to their characteristics. My plan for the Plant Kingdom is to conduct a brief presentation at home using our Plant Kingdom chart and cards, then do the rest of the work outdoors for a more hands-on experience (that is if the weather permits).

Mother Nature seems to be hearing our pleas for a good weather and she gave us a week of sun and heat!

The first thing here was to introduce the Plant Kingdom Chart.  Similar to the animal kingdom, plants are also classified according to their structure and characteristics.  During the presentation, there’s a lot of questions coming out from Mavi and it is a good thing I have fact cards for him to read out loud and be able to explain the grouping.

You see Mavi is not a passive learner.  He asks gazillions of questions, everytime you answer his question, expect a follow up question, then another and another.  That’s the reason why I always have fact cards because at times, books are not available and I don’t use the internet whenever we have lessons.  But of course, if you have books by all means, use them.  You can always rely on books.  Here’s what we have at home, World of Plants.  We’ve been using this for 3 years now.  I totally love this book, because it is very informative and have lots of beautiful pictures for presentation.

Now with all the concepts learned, we went out to our forest/park and looked for these plants, to observe and investigate.  Note, the helmet is NOT A FASHION STATEMENT. He was wearing it because he was using his scooter.  Mavi is picking up samples so we could take a look at them at home.

 Liverworts and mosses are everywhere in this forest (and in Ireland!)!  This is a tree stump by the way, with sides covered with non-vascular plants!

Mavi checking out a conifer tree. He’s trying to check out the cones, looking for the male and female reproductive parts of this tree.   Mavi - "The leaves are indeed waxy!” A sight to behold!  Perfect place to explore and learn. 

“Mom, ferns!”

And there you go, non-vascular plants again of any kind.

We investigated the stream as well, just to confirm that mosses, liverworts and horsetails really grow in damp places.

The last part was checking out plants that are dicots and monocots.  Daffodils are monocots.  I guess we’ll be back to extend our nature study for dicot and monocot plants!We took samples and brought them home for examination.

And that’s it for an introductory of the plant kingdom.  We’ll do MORE nature study as the weather warms especially in summer vacation. I am planning to spend our summer nature study now that Vito can participate (for sensorial).

The Plant Kingdom file can be purchased from here.

Pin this for later! This post is part of the 12 Months of Montessori Learning which is hosted by Natural Beach Living and The Natural Homeschool.

Amazing blogs involved in the 12 Months of Montessori Learning

Natural Beach Living ~ The Natural Homeschool ~ Living Montessori Now

The Kavanaugh Report ~ Mama’s Happy Hive ~ Study at Home Mama ~ Child Led Life

Every Star Is Different ~ Grace and Green Pastures ~ The Pinay Homeschooler

Parts of a Flower

Oh I couldn’t resist not having a flower study! Daffodils are just everywhere and knowing me, I just have to grab this opportunity to review our parts of the flower and use our flower puzzle! (My puzzle is from Tower High Learning)

So what to do with all these daffodils that Mavi picked from our backyard? Dissect them!

And here’s how we investigated each part.

I get lots of “ooohs” and “aaahs” from Mavi. I love it!

This is how I do it at home and Mavi loves hands-on! 

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More activities here from my Pinterest board!

FLOWER BOARD Follow Pinay Homeschooler's board Flower Unit on Pinterest.

MEGA Collection of BOTANY Unit Studies

Finally, I compiled all our botany lessons in one post. It’s easier to make it as a reference in the future and to you dear readers as well! These are the activities we have done for the past years, when Mavi was still in preschool.  I hope you find all of these helpful in your own homeschool journey.  Just click any of the links below, to direct you to the specific post.

(In no specific order)

• Learning about flowers. This is THE FIRST TIME we dissected a flower and Mavi had a fabulous time learning about the parts!
• The Tree. Our FIRST LESSON ON TREES and comes with a DIY tree felt puzzle
• Parts of a plant. Mavi was only 2 years old here when we study the different parts of a plant using nomenclature cards.  Was he bored? No!! He had fun looking for the different parts in grandma’s garden.
• Fruits and Vegetables Unit
• The Bean Seed. Identify the parts of a bean seed and observed how they sprout.
• The Plant. Mavi was attending Montessori preschool and brought home his plants.  We review the parts of a plant using a real  one at home. 
• Looking into Trees and Leaves.  We matched leaf shapes, create trees in different seasons and identify the parts of the leaf/tree.
• The Plant Life Cycle (Photosynthesis).  We did a little experiment on how water travels through the plants.
• Tree Shapes. Yes! Trees have different form and shapes.  We worked on this outdoors and identified the shapes of the trees in our yard. How fun!
• The Poinsettia.  Seasonal lesson, especially during Christmas.
• Leaf Shapes.  Montessori-inspired activities. We collected leaves in the park and matched our collection to the leaf shapes nomenclature card.
• Inside of a fruit.  Making fruit prints!
• Life Cycle of an Apple.  Lots of crafting!
• All about flowers [1] and [2].  We usually study flowers in springtime.  Here we looked into the different parts by dissecting a flower, collected flowers in the yard and used it as a paint brush.. and more outdoor flower observation.
• Flower DIY foam puzzle.
• Parts of an apple and tomato.  Yes, we dissected these!

 

You can also visit my Pinterest board for more ideas!

Follow Pinay Homeschooler's board Botany Unit on Pinterest.

Springtime is Flower-time! (part deux)

To continue my previous post on flowers... here are the other activities we tried:

Flower Addition and Equation Matching.  In this activity, I printed out addition cards using flower heads.  The purpose of this activity is to match the addition cards with the proper equation in addition. 

 

Flower Pattern Matching.  I made some tricky patterns and printed it twice for Mavi to match.  This can be also be played as a memory game.

   

Math Addition.  Using the flowers we created in my previous post, we played a game of guess the total number of flowers using the flower equation cards that I made.  I showed him an equation and he had to "stick" the correct number of flowers in the playdough for the answer.

 

Parts of a Plant. We made a model of a plant using the flowers and popsicle sticks. I made him identify the parts. I took out our Parts of a Plant Nomenclature and Booklet material for him to read and check his work.  The plant version you see below is my work.

   

            

You can the Plant Nomenclature and Booklet by clicking the image below.

And here is Mavi's version.  He wrote the labels on his own.

 

Springtime is Flower-time!

Hi everyone!  There are lots of daffodils growing in the yard and Mavi has been constantly picking them up for his "collection".  So to make use of the flowers I pulled out our flower nomenclature cards and told him that he will need to dissect the daffodils to learn about its part.

Since we did this activity a few years ago, he was so excited to do it again.  Kids love to do this!  I know how dreadful it is to learn about the parts of a flower (with all those weird names).  But if you get to this activity with your kids, with a tactile activity, they will definitely learn faster and the retention is much better.

             

As we dissect the daffodil, I would ask him questions like "how does the petals feel like?", "why do you think that some flowers are yellow some are red?".  As we go along, I also discuss the functions of each parts.  He mentioned that his favorite parts are the petals and the stamens because according to him, these makes the flower look beautiful.

           

If you are interested, you can this Parts of the Flower and Definition booklet by clicking the image below:

Afterwhich we read our book How Flowers Grow and look at the pictures of the different kinds of flowers around the world.

I was also inspired to make flowers in popsicle sticks.  I love how these flowers turned out!   You can place them in a vase and stick them using a playdough or clay :)

            

In our case, we found a purpose for these flowers in our math activity which I will talk about in my next post, so stay tuned!

For more FREEbies and learning aids, please check The Pinay Homeschooler Shop and Downloads.

Follow Pinay Homeschooler's board Botany Unit on Pinterest.

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Montessori Monday
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Preschool Corner
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Fruits and Vegetables Activities

We are currently having a Fruit and Veggie Unit and here are the activities we've done so far and the activities we'll be doing this weekend.

Alpha Fruit and Veggies.   Here Mavi's ordering the the names and the fruits and vegetable cards.  He then matched the cards to the upper and lowercase letters of the alphabet. 

 

 

 

Read and Spell

Here's my friend's daughter little C, working on the read and spell cards which you can download for free here.

          

Mavi also worked a few grammar lessons.  Here we use our fruits and counter to study the plural forms of the fruits.  I also included this activity in the Fruits and Vegetables Unit Pack.

Here I introduced Montessori Grammar Symbols. 

 

   

 

Mavi also enjoyed working this inside fruit matching.  This is included in the Fruits and Vegetables Unit Pack.

            

Now for other activities which we will be doing in the next few days, here they are.  We've done them in the past and will be doing it again. I just have to post this ahead as I am not sure if I can take any photos because for sure my hands will be very busy as well plus the fact that our little guy, Baby X is kinda clingy this days so I won't be able to hold a camera as well.

Inside and Out Prints of a Fruit.  This is one activity my son truly enjoyed.  I bought different fruits from the market, cut them into half and use paints to make prints.

We will be working parts of an apple.  We will dissect an apple again and identify the parts. (Click the image for the history of the picture)

 

Same thing with tomato.  We'll be working with it as well. My son loves these and will love to all of these again! (Click the image for the history of the picture)

Thank you for dropping by!  So did you like the activities?  Please don't forget to click "notify me" in the comment section so you will receive my reply to your comments.

For more FREEbies and learning aids, please check The Pinay Homeschooler Shop and Downloads.

Linking to:

Montessori Monday
TGIF Linky Party
Teach Beside Me
Preschool Corner
Teaching Mama
I Can Teach My Child
Home + School = Afterschool!
Natural Homeschool's Montessori Linky
History and Geography