Botany Week III - Mints, Parsleys

Our final week of foundation... and the start of our dive into Plant Families!

All of my notes from teaching Botany in 2017 & 2018 are on my website.

Monday, May 31

Thank you to Justin for leading a great discussion on Physics, and to Chet for bringing us a huge pile of different lengths of bamboo for building projects! Thank you also to Pat for repairing the red pump handle on our Water Table!

Tuesday, June 1

• EC: sit next to our little hawthorn tree and read "Teasel and Tweed" from A Donsy of Gnomes: 7 Gentle Gnome Stories by Sieglinde deFrancesca (this story is about a baby lamb getting caught in the thorns of a hawthorn), make Secret Treasure Paths of yarn in the yard for the other to follow, practice winding yarn back into a ball as you walk along the Secret Treasure Path, finish bamboo tipi, finger knit lengths of yarn for other friends to use in their tipis, do "Spring Garden Circle" (adding in "Little Gnomes" song and the gnome hammering verse), get out yoga mats and do some cards from the Yoga Pretzels card deck, complete the Who Pooped? 100 piece puzzle
• Gardening Projects: discard plant experiments which did not work out (avocado, wild strawberry), plant pineapple in a pot (it has nice long roots and new growth in its leaves), continue to build bamboo tipis for nooks and/or as gardening projects, finger knit lengths of yarn to wind around the poles as support for the vines (we would like to grow morning glory, moonflower, and beans up these tipis)

  after losing (and then finding) a few pairs of scissors on the ground, we decided it made the most sense to place all the acrylic yarn on the wooden table in the Art Room, have students come and wind a small ball of the color they like, and then take that ball of yarn and finger knit it and add it to the tipi (instead of having the huge skein of yarn and a pair of scissors out in the woods)

• Second Great Lesson: read and discuss "The Hidden Ones" and "The Sunlight Eaters" from Mythology of Microbes, do "Order the Eaters" activity from MM binder, explain Photosynthesis (it was fun to watch them think the recipe for glucose through... "you must have six of each in order for it to work... wait! there's a lot of extra oxygen!!")

  rock eaters

  chemical eaters

  sunlight eaters

  sugar / protein / lipid eaters

  plastic eaters

  

  add "Order the Eaters" to MLB, discuss the Miller-Eury reaction, do "The Tree of Life" activity and talk through "The Fungus Problem"

• Play / Board Games: knock knock jokes, fort building, Skippity, Kayanak: Angling, Ice, and Adventure

Wednesday, June 2

Unscheduled Wednesday included:

hot pudding (I made Homemade Chocolate Pudding and let it cool undisturbed so that it would form a wrinkled skin... just like the Earth's crust as it cooled off... of course, everyone got a taste and we also enjoyed some fresh local strawberries that a family donated!)

cold pudding (the Early Childhood kiddos made instant chocolate pudding for sensory play and "edible mud" for the horses to play in)

taste chocolate pudding along with fresh mint leaves from our garden

give the horses a bath with the hose

more tipi building and fort design with the bamboo pieces

finger knitting long pieces of yarn to weave in and out of the bamboo

a quick review of Photosynthesis (a green piece of fabric to represent the leaf and 36 square pieces of cardstock to build and rearrange the molecules involved: 18 "O" cards, 12 "H" cards, 6 "C" cards)

read the introduction to Shanleya's Quest: A Botany Adventure by Thomas Elpel

"Story Time"
"The Rain of Time"
"Soup Bubbles"
"The Great Tree"
"Shanleya"

first adult ladybugs hatch!

soak and cut raisins for ladybugs to eat

pull invasive vines (Virginia creeper and grapevine) from around the house and use it to cover tipis

major Goobi explosion! I got three more kits (180, 180, and 300) since this magnetic building material has been such an incredible hit

Thursday, June 3

Thank you to Al for leading a fascinating Philosophy discussion on Time, and to Aimee for making us some yummy candied mint and lemon balm leaves! They were a perfect way to build excitement for our first plant family: Mints!

• Nature: this afternoon we were able to spot an adult ladybug which had just emerged (ladybug eggs are yellow; young ladybugs are yellow when they first go into their pupal stage; adults are also yellow when they first emerge from their pupal stage, because their blood is yellow and their newly formed shell is still soft & translucent)
  

  after the ladybug's shell hardens it gets its true adult color and spots

• Experiment: build TMEPMOAT (The Most Epic Plant Maze of All Time) using an old dresser which I had handy which happened to have a hole in the top, insanely perfect for a Plant Maze!
  

  we set the dresser up in the Art Room with all of the drawers removed, laying cardboard rectangles on the slats which traditionally support the drawers but now hold the components of the maze, placing a sugar snap pea seedling inside, and taping a very large piece of cardboard across the front to completely darken the inside

  

  thank you to Jennifer for the extra large boxes... one was (unexpectedly) the perfect dimensions for this project!

• Play: "What Does Johnny Have in His Pocket?" at lunchtime
• Botany: introduction to & exploration of The Mint Family

  featured plants: basil, holy basil, sage, oregano, thyme, lemon thyme, lemon balm, spearmint, apple mint, pineapple mint, lime mint, orange mint, sweet pear mint, ginger mint, chocolate mint, strawberry mint, lavender, rosemary, lamb's ear, summer savory

  read Finding Mint Island (Mint Family) from Shanleya's Quest by Thomas Elpel

  enjoy candied mint and lemon balm leaves

  take a walk around the yard to find plants in the Mint Family, collect leaves, do pencil sketches of leaves (b&w) in MLB, add an explanation of how to identify a plant in the Mint Family, list example plants

Friday, June 4

• School Meeting: make decisions about the storage and sharing of the Goobi kits, set up the old train table to hold all of the Goobi pieces, make up a schedule whereby a pair of students has free access to the Goobi pieces each day and can build large designs without interruption (and the other students have to wait for their day to roll around), decide that students will show off what they created at 2:30 pm before we write in Plan Books, decide that we will revisit this in a week and see how the new routine is going and tweak it if needed
• Botany: introduction to & exploration of The Parsley Family

  featured plants: carrot, celery, dill, fennel, parsley, lovage

  SWI discussion about < umbrage > and < umbrella >

  the Latin word for umbrella used to be umbella but its spelling and pronunciation shifted due to the influence of umbra: "shade, shadow"

  read The Parsley Guardian (Parsley Family) from Shanleya's Quest by Thomas Elpel

  take a walk around the yard to find plants in the Parsley Family

  since all of our umbellifers (except the bronze fennel) are still little seedlings, I also got celery, carrots with greens, flatleaf parsley, curly parsley, and fennel microgreens from the store

  notice that the carrot seedlings are getting their true leaves and are identifiable, but the dill has only just germinated and only has its cotyledons (which do not follow the umbellifer pattern)

  do pencil sketches of leaves (b&w) in MLB, add an explanation of how to identify a plant in the Parsley Family, list example plants

  we also noted in looking through my box of seed packets that lovage is in the Parsley Family and summer savory is in the Mint Family

  begin the "What Ingredients Will Celery Move to Its Leaves?" experiment on p.46 of The Curious Kid's Science Book by Asia Citro

  it is really important to keep this experiment in the refrigerator or the sugar water will spoil and it won't be safe to taste the celery leaves

  my students got into this experiment and we ended up with a really long list! Solo square base cups are perfect for this because you can write the date, the child's initials, and the ingredient on them easily

  peppermint extract
  vanilla extract
  maple syrup
  Hershey's chocolate syrup
  honey
  olive oil
  Bragg's liquid aminos
  freshly squeezed lemon juice
  peppermint tea
  red food coloring
  blue food coloring
  green food coloring
• Plant Adoption: continue to care for seedlings, check on larger plants which are planted in the straw bales, plant new basil & pepper plants
• Card & Board Games: Fairy Queen, Quixo, Election Night!, Dr. Eureka, Bird Bingo

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