Terrarium Teaching

Hey everyone or should I say anyone?!  This is my first blog post!  I've been really inspired by all the fantastic teaching blogs out there.  I was feeling left out so I had to join in on the fun.  This is a project we've been working on this week as part of my plant unit. 
(It was so hard to get a good picture, those are my feet in the reflection, don't tell my students I was standing on the desks!!)

My amazingly generous Aunt Dawn donated this aquarium to my class last year.  We have turned it into a terrarium.  My students helped with filling it with soil organic material, sand and rocks.  Next, I showed them two different types of seeds.  I had them make predictions about what the seeds will be when they mature.  My second graders are so smart, they wanted to smell the seeds to help with their predictions!  They each drew a picture of what the terrarium will look like in May and wrote their predictions down.  

I made this display and taped some of the seeds to the cute little seed packet graphics from DJ inkers.  

I'm not going to tell my kiddo's what the seeds will be but they'll figure it out because they each had a chance to plant them and several of them are planted right up against the glass.  Last year I used radish seeds and it was really amazing to see them grow.  I couldn't believe how long the roots were and how many roots belonged to such a little plant!  We did not plant radishes this year!  

Does anyone have a guess what they might be?

I created this worksheet for the predictions using DJ inkers fonts and borders.  Click Here to download the sheet.   

    
                    

Here are some student examples:

After that I let each child plant a seed.  We used jumbo craft sticks to mark where their seed is.  We wrote their initials on the sticks.  The terrarium will be overflowing with foliage pretty soon.  I'll post pictures a long the way!  

 This morning during phonics practice there was a beetle on the rug.  My students wanted to put it in the terrarium so we caught it and let him loose in the soil.


Here is the foldable to tape your seeds onto, click here: