Skip to main content

Plant Science: Activities and Resources

Plants are always a favorite topic to learn about in our household. My kids love exploring new plants that they come across and there's something kind of magical about watching a garden grow. Here are some of our favorite plant science activities and resources:

Activities, resources, and experiment ideas for learning about plants



Identifying Local Plants
One of our very favorite ways to study plants, is simply to go out into nature and explore. We take short nature walks around our neighborhood, along hiking trails, and in the park, several times a week. While we're out, we like to photograph plants that we come across to try to identify later. You can buy a plant guide book or use an online plant guide to try to identify the plants you saw, or my personal favorite is the iNaturalist app. iNaturalist is a free app you can download onto your phone or tablet. You just upload your plant pictures and the app and other users help you identify them. You can also help other users identify their posts.

Chicory


Ziplock Greenhouse Activity
This is an excellent activity for learning about plant germination. 

For this activity you will need:
-Seeds (beans, sunflowers, and peas work particularly well for this activity)
-A sandwich sized ziplock bag
-A paper towel

Start by folding up a paper towel or two to fit inside the ziplock bag, get it damp, and slide it into the bag.

Take a few seeds and set them inside the bag, next to the damp paper towel.



Seal the bag and set it somewhere it will get a some sunlight. We taped ours in a sunny window. 


Sealing the bag with the damp paper towel inside, creates your own simple terrarium, so you shouldn't have to add more water at any point.

Watch and record your observations over the next couple weeks. After a few days or so, you should start to see your beans growing little roots and sprouts!


If your paper towel starts to mildew at any point you can carefully change it out for a fresh one. Just be sure to dampen the new paper towel.

Once your plants have grown some roots and sprouted leaves transfer them to a pot or your garden.

Capillary Action Experiment
Plants take in water from the ground through their roots, the water then moves up through the stem and out to the leaves and flowers. Water moves through the plant because of transpiration and cohesion. Plants slowly release water into the environment through small openings in their leaves called stomata, this causes more water molecules to move up the plant towards the stomata because water molecules are attracted to one another. This experiment is a really neat way to actually observe this action. 

For this experiment you will need:
-Several white flowers (or celery stalks work too).
-Several cups of water
-Food dye

Add some food dye to each cup of water and stick a flower in each one. Then just set your cups some place safe and observe over the next several hours.

You should see the food dye slowly moving up the stem and into the petals of the flower.




Start An Herb Garden
One of the best ways to learn about plants is by growing some of your own. Buy some pots, some potting soil, and some seeds or starter plants and grow your own garden. Herbs are a good place to start if your not an experienced gardener and they tend to do well in pots. Some of my favorites, and easiest to grow, at least in my experience, are the herbs in the Lamiacae (mint) family like peppermint, spearmint, lemonbalm, beebalm, sage, basil, and catnip.




Videos About Plants
YouTube has lots of great plant science videos. Here are a few of our favorites:
-What is a Plant? All About Plants For Kids from FreeSchool
-How Does a Seed Become a Plant? from SciShow Kids
-What's Inside a Bean? from SciShow Kids
-Look Inside a Flower from SciShow Kids
-Germination of a Seed (timelapse)
-Capillary Action In Plants
-The Color Changing Celery Experiment from SciShow Kids
-Photosynthesis: Educational Video For Kids from Happy Learning

Plant Science Webpages 
-Biology For Kids: Plants from Ducksters
-The Lifecycle of Flowering Plants from National Geographic Kids
-Fun Plant Facts For Kids
-Plant Facts from DK
-50 Interesting Facts About Plants


Books About Plants
-The Tiny Seed by Eric Carle
-Oh Say Can.You Seed: All About Flowering Plants by Bonnie Worth
-National Geographic Kids: Seed To Plant by Kristin Baird Rattini
-The Dandelion Seed by Joseph Anthony
-My First Encyclopedia Of Trees by Richard McGinlay
-The Kid's Guide To Exploring Nature by Brooklyn Botanic Garden Educators


If you enjoyed this post, check out:

-Seed Investigation
-Dandelion Investigation


Follow me on:
Facebook 
Pinterest 
Instagram

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Water Relay Races For Kids

I don't know about your kids, but mine absolutely love games involving water and getting wet in the summer time. In  this post I share 5 of our favorite water relay races to play with friends. These are perfect for birthday parties, homeschool get togethers, and other group events. Sponge Relay: For this relay you will need: - 2 teams of several kids each -2 large sponges -4 small buckets or containers of some sort Divide your participants into 2 teams and have each team line up single file at a predetermined starting place.  Hand out a sponge to the first participant in each line. Set a bucket of water by each team. Set an empty bucket about 20 ft away from each team.  The two empty buckets should be the same size and should have a "fill line" marked half way up. On a count of 3 (or ready set go) the first participant in each line should dip their sponge in the bucket of water, run to the empty bucket, squeeze the water from their spo

Make Your Own Mineral Identification Kit

One of my family's favorite hobbies is rock hounding. We love collecting and trying to identify neat rock and mineral specimens that we come across. You can put together your own simple kit for identifying rocks and minerals with materials you likely already have around your home. In this post I will explain how to put together your own mineral identification kit and how to use it to identify rocks and minerals you find on your adventures. Making a Rock and Mineral ID Kit Grab yourself a printable Rock and Mineral Journal for recording your observations here:  Printable Rock and Mineral Journal ,  and then gather the following supplies: -A pencil -A coin -An iron nail -A piece of glass (an old pocket mirror works well) -A ceramic tile -A small watertight bottle or container -Some vinegar -A magnet  -A magnifying glass -A dropper (optional)  -Rock and mineral guide (optional)  -A small container or bag to keep it all in Fill the small watertight

STEM Art: 21 STEAM Project Ideas

My kids love STEM projects and we're always looking for ways to add more art to our homeschool days, so I decided I am going to try to dedicate one morning a week this year to STEM art activities. In this post I share some of the ideas we're planning to try, plus a few favorites we've done in the past. What is STEM Education? STEM education is a blended and often hands on approach to teaching science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, which are some of today's fastest growing industries. STEM education offers students the opportunity to problem solve and work on real world problems and questions. Sometimes the acronym STEAM is used, to include the arts. Adding art to STEM education encourages creative thinking and problem solving skills. It can also help make the other included subjects more appealing to some students. STEM Art Projects  Penny Spinners-   Learn about centrifugal force and make your own spinning tops with this fun post from Teach Beside Me. Explo

40 Things To Look At Under A Microscope

Microscopes are a scientific instrument that all kids should get a chance to learn how to use. There are so many everyday things that look really amazing up-close. Under a microscope you can see that objects and even plants and animals are made of tiny intricate parts. The microscopic world is amazing! In this post I share 40 things to try looking at up-close under a microscope. 40 Things To Look At Under A Microscope: 1. A feather  2. Soil 3. An insect wing 4. A human hair 5. An animal hair 6. Pond water 7. Diatomacious earth-  diatomacious earth looks SO cool magnified! 8. Cheek swab 9. An insect leg 10. A drop of blood 11. Mold 12. Sand 13. A shaving from a chicken bone- try both a piece of hard bone from the outside and some spongy bone from inside a bone. 14. Kombucha 15. Snake or lizard skin after they shed  16. A flower petal 17. A sliver of wood 18. Sugar 19. Salt- try different types 20. Thread 21. Saliva 22. A s

Learning About The Human Body Part 1: The Skeletal And Muscular Systems

At the end of each school year, I sit down with my daughter to discuss what topics she wants to learn about the next year. One of her science topics she picked to study this year was the human body. Instead of ordering a boxed curriculum set, I decided to put together my own human body unit. In this post I share some of the resources we used for learning about the human skeletal and muscular systems, plus instructions for a couple hands on learning activities. You can find my post about the human respiratory and circulatory systems  here , and my post about the human digestive and nervous systems  here . The Human Skeletal System Our skeletons are the frame of our body. They give us structure, without them our bodies would be limp like noodles. They also provide places for muscles to attach so our bodies can move. Why Does Your Body Need Calcium? Experiment: This is a simple experiment you can do to explore why calcium is important for our bones. You will need: -several clean