Seeds

I wanted to share this awesome investigative activity that my second graders did today.  

First we watched this video at brainpopjr.com If you don't have an account set up with them you can set up a free 5 day trial!  All you have to have is an e-mail account. 

Click on the picture for the link to the video.

The night before I do this activity I soak lima and pinto beans in water, enough for one per person each.  Then, I give each child a magnifying glass (oh the excitement!!) and bean of each kind.  I let them investigate the seeds.  They usually figure out they can take the seed coat off pretty quickly.  I prompt them to tell me what they see.  It's really awesome because you can see the first root (also known as the radicle vocabulary word!!)  and the baby leaves in boths beans with just letting them soak over night.  They grow so fast!

 Can you see the radicle and baby leaves?

After they've had time to explore.  I pass out their very own bean book.  I use this one from enchantedlearning.com 

 Click on the picture for the link.

The last part of this lesson is each student gets to make their own green house.  They get a plastic sandwich bag and a paper towel.  (I pre-write their names on their bag with sharpie) They wet the towel at the drinking fountain (we're lucky the fountain is just outside our door, we don't have a sink in our room).  Then they put one lima bean and one pinto bean in the back on top of the paper towel.  We taped them to the window and will check them in two days.  We'll continue to check them for a couple of weeks or until they start turning moldy.  

What do you think?  Is this something you might try in your classroom?  Thanks for stopping by!