My second grade botanists will learn the different ways a new plant begins- bulbs, cuttings, and seeds. (More information will be coming in future posts about some of these investigations.) Check out this strawberry begonia “raining” babies!

The plant unit is an easy one to enrich at home:

(Links are underlined.)

• Take a trip to Callaway Gardens.  One of my favorite family destinations!
• Visit the Atlanta Botanical Gardens or Gibbs Gardens.
• Go to a nursery.  Look for ways that plants are categorized (annuals, perennials, bushes, flowering trees, etc.)
• Visit one of the nearby nature centers- Chattahoochee Nature Center, Autrey Mill, or Dunwoody Nature Center.
• Scoop up a plateful of soil and then find out what comprises it- rocks, pieces of plants, maybe a dead bug…
• Ride your bikes on the Greenway and talk about the plants you see there.
• Visit the new Pikes Nursery that recently opened near school.
• Have your child buy a plant to care for in his/her room.
• Fall is the perfect time of year to plant perennials and trees.
• Find and compare seeds from the fruits and vegetables you eat at home.
• Plant seeds.
• Plant bulbs that will bloom next spring.
• Go for a nature walk in the woods.  Look for plants that are deciduous and evergreen.
• Collect leaves and sort them by their edges- lobed, toothed, and smooth.
• Look for the different parts of plants that you eat during meals:
  seeds-rice, corn, nuts, beans
  stems-celery, asparagus
  roots- carrots, radishes
  leaves- lettuce, spinach, basil
  flowers- broccoli, cauliflower

For two days now, we have had a group of six visiting mallard ducks in the pond behind school. Percy, our silver appleyard duck who was hatched in the science lab, immediately joined them. He wouldn’t leave the visitors today when I came to feed him. I think he has been lonely since his mate disappeared about a month ago. Could these ducks have flown in from North Carolina to escape the hurricane? What a great Atlanta welcome he has given them!

My kindergarten scientists are studying farm life, so it was a perfect time to have an egg lab. We identified the parts of an egg and saw the difference between raw and boiled eggs.

We placed an egg in vinegar. We hypothesized what might happen to the egg. We immediately saw bubbles. We’ll check this investigation next week.

Why does the egg sink in fresh water and float in salt water?

If you squeeze an empty water bottle and then let go of the squeeze over an egg, you can suck the yolk into the bottle and separate it from the white. It works like a pipette.

How did the hard boiled egg fit inside the bottle? This investigation involved fire!

Try spinning a raw egg and a hard boiled egg. Why is there a difference?

We recited “Humpty Dumpty” and discussed why he might be on the wall and what might have made him fall. Then we discovered a way to make a raw egg stand. This took patience!

Watch this video to see some of the investigations we did and some others you can try at home.

My PreK scientists created a chemical reaction and explored color mixing as they dropped colored vinegar onto plates of baking soda with pipettes. I gave them the primary colors (red, yellow, and blue), but they made the secondary colors. The children loved observing the bubbling eruptions that result when baking soda and vinegar are combined. We had lots of fizzy fun!

I was able to laminate the long snake skin I received last spring. I hung it on a hook, so we can turn it over. I have received three snake skins this week! I plan to laminate another, so we can compare them. We will also look at them under microscopes. It would be fun to do some rubbings too!

I am slowly building an outdoor science area. I placed two bird feeders, a suet feeder, and a hummingbird feeder next to the birdbath gifted by the Girl Scouts. Today’s addition was a hummingbird swing that was a gift from Mrs. Daniel. Mrs. Harwell’s class sees humming birds throughout their day. Next up is a birdhouse.