Plant Experiments cont.

The blue container has their carnivorous plants. Thin red shoots have started to sprout!

The container next to it has their flowers. I moved the pots into an old grapes punnet so it'd be easier to transfer them to the window sill each day. 🌞 They've sprouted nicely and the girls are excited to check on them each morning! 🌺🌼🌸

The small container on the right has an abundance of cress seeds. 🌿🌿🌿 There were a few seeds left in the packet but not enough worth saving, so we decided to sow them all into one small container (old hummus pot!) and see if being overcrowded made a difference to their growth. 😁

The container at the front has 4 pots (old yoghurt pots in an old mushroom punnet!) from their cress experiment (the 5th pot being in the cupboard so it gets no sunlight!). In clockwise order from the top left: no water, no air, no soil, control. The girls predicted that only the control pot would grow, so they were surprised to see the seeds in the no soil pot were sprouting! So maybe the ones in the other pots, under the soil where they can't see them, are sprouting too? But how well will they grow? More waiting to see, inshaAllah! We only planted them on Friday so this photo is only day 2 of their growth. 🌱

The overcrowded pot had some seeds pressed against the side of the container, so they could easily see those ones sprouting. InshaAllah they'll be able to see the roots growing and spreading out as the days progress, too. 😄😄

On a particularly sunny day, the girls noticed that the plants on the windowsill were bending over. Which direction were they bending and why? M said they were trying to get closer to the light (she remembered seeing it a previous year in the kitchen when we were growing green beans!) so I thought I'd teach them the word phototropism. They didn't want their plants wonky, so what could we do to make them straight? Turn them around! When we checked back on them a few hours later, they were growing straight up again. 😄

When they told Papa later that they'd seen phototropism on the windowsill, they were happy to see him both surprised and confused. 😂 Then I got them to explain to him what it meant - which he remembered learning about in secondary school. 😂😂

[EDIT:]

Day 4: All the plants in our cress experiment have sprouted! But why? 😙

clockwise from bottom left: 1, 2, 3, 4

5

1) Control - everything is as expected!
2) No water - because the soil was damp when we started, even though we've not added any more.
3) No air - because there was some air in the soil/under the lid to begin with, maybe? And every time we water them, we take off the lid and let air in... We changed to lid to clingfilm so it wasn't pushing down on the plants.
4) No soil - because the water woke up the seeds, but they've not grown properly because they've got nothing to hold them up or give them nutrients!
5) No light - because the seed doesn't need light to sprout, the plant only needs light once it's grown leaves to absorb it... And every time we open the cupboard door, they get a little bit of light... M noticed they were yellow though!

The above is what the girls came up with, with some discussion. So what do they expect to see happen next? That only the control cress will grow and the others will begin to die as more time goes on. 😏

As for the overcrowded pot, they're all growing well at the moment. It's really interesting to look through the container and see the roots spreading out and the shoots breaking through the soil!

The flowers are still growing well and the carnivorous plants are growing too but more slowly in comparison. 😁

[EDIT:]

Day 8:

The no soil pot was beginning to smell so we threw it away! Why was it so smelly? Because the plants which weren't growing were starting to rot. 😷

[EDIT:]

Day ??:

I stopped keeping track of this lol.

The overcrowded one was too overcrowded! The plants pushed the soil out and made a mess (why? brief lesson on displacement!) and we compared the size of the cress to the control... Some of them weren't growing as much because they didn't have enough water/nutrients from having to share and others had grown bigger because they had taken most of the nutrients/water. Then we threw the pot away after seeing what would happen if we stopped watering them too. 😂

The cress with no light had withered and turned yellow, so we threw that away too. The girls came to the conclusion plants turn yellow/lose their green colour when they don't have enough light.

The no water cress had started out growing better than the control! But eventually they wilted and we could see the effects of not watering them - this was a few days after we threw the pot away which had no light. M was confident this was because the soil was already damp when we sowed the seeds, because otherwise they shouldn't have been able to grow at all! We also noticed how the flowers they'd planted needed to be watered every 1-2 days or they started to wilt, whereas the cress seemed like it could go a long time without needing any extra water - so even though all plants need the same things to survive, they don't all need the same amounts of them. This led to a discussion about cacti because deserts don't have much water at all but cacti can still grow there. 🌵🌸

[image]

The no air cress was still growing well in comparison. Why? The girls suggested it was because they kept getting air whenever we watered them, so really it was getting everything just like the control was! The clingfilm lid was stopping the cress from growing taller though, which is why they were bent over. When we looked more closely, we could see that some of the plants were turning brown. Maybe this was an effect of not having enough air?

[image]

The control pot was still growing and all the cress was still alive. The only confusing thing was that there were less shoots in there to begin with, in comparison to all the other pots. Why was that? Maybe because those seeds just happened to be less hardy in the first place. There really isn't any way for us to find out except to repeat the whole experiment again and see if we get the same results. We talked about why repeating experiments, therefore, led to better results. Because if we get the same thing again and again we can treat those results as being more reliable and not inexplicable one-off results!

Shape Poems

I looked on Google for examples of shape poems for KS1 aged children and put together a sheet of examples (download here).

We read through the sheet together and talked about what they liked/disliked, which was their favourite and why, what kinds of layouts did they have and what they thought made something a shape poem. Did it have to rhyme? Did it have to fill the picture or make a picture? Did it have to be full sentences or just words? Did all the writing have to be the same size? etc. etc.! Then I stuck it to the wall as a reminder.

Continuing with our plants theme, I decided we'd do a shape poem about flowers.

On the whiteboard, we discussed the kinds of things we might talk about in our poems. Then we talked about how we might write those ideas into the shape of a flower.

I gave them a faded template of a flower for them to use (in the above download file). Z really wanted to join in so I sat with her as she wanted to know how to spell words, so the twins ended up working independently. I originally planned to sit with them and do more thesaurus work, but it didn't work out that way! And they weren't inclined to plan first, they just wanted to write straight onto the flower. 😏

When they were done, we mounted these onto coloured paper and put them on display next to their acrostics. 😄😄

Blue: F, Green: M, Orange: Z

The twins enjoyed turning the paper to write their words in a way which fit in the petals and in the centre!

Z's poem says: "orange, red, pink" "poppy" "beautiful" "smell fresh and nice" "flower" "roses" "make me happy when they grow"

I asked them if they wanted to do their own shape poem about anything, drawing the picture themselves, but they said no. 😆 They'd had enough of them. 😂😂

What plants need to grow

Our Science topic for this half term is plants: looking at what they need to grow, their basic structures and functions, and their life cycles in terms of flowering, pollination, seed formation and dispersal.

We were gifted a carnivorous plants display from my parents - which I've been putting off planting over the winter as we were back and forth between Ipswich and Birmingham so wouldn't have been able to look after them well - so we finally got round to planting those! We also had a few flower seeds from my nephew's birthday party so we planted those too.

I asked the girls what they thought the plants needed to grow well - what did they already know? They said water, light and soil because they remembered our sunflower experiments in the garden from previous years. 😁🌻🌻🌻 We looked in one of their science books about plants so they could check and they remembered plants also need air - because they "breathe" in carbon dioxide and breathe out oxygen, which is the opposite of what animals do.

I told them I was going to put their flowers and carnivorous plant display on the sideboard where they could get lots of sun because I wanted them to grow well, inshaAllah. And we needed to remember to water them often! They were already in soil and they weren't covered up so should be able to get plenty of air.

Then I asked them if we could design an experiment to test if they were right about these four factors being important for plant growth... We could use cress seeds and see what happens if we tried to grow them without those things. Could they design an experiment to see which one of those things is the most important, maybe? How could they make it a fair test?

With some  discussion, they came up with the following:

They both found the "no soil" pot hilarious for some reason. 😂😂

Z didn't really take part in the designing an experiment part, but she understood we had 4 different pots to compare how the seeds would grow without either light, water, soil or air. And the 5th pot had all four things to be the control, so to show how the plant is supposed to grow.

Once the cress has sprouted, inshaAllah, we can discuss what they'll observe and why it happened. 🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱

Simple Spring/Summer Plant Projects

As I mentioned in my earlier post, we're taking a break from formal academic studies over Ramadaan so we can concentrate on our Arabic and Quran. But I don't mean we're going to stop learning altogether - that's impossible anyway! Just that we'll discuss things as they come up rather than do planned lessons (they'll still cover plenty of Literacy/Numeracy targets naturally through reading/everyday experiences/etc.), but I thought it made sense to keep a loose Science focus by getting all the books (both fiction and non) out for their book box for the month, since it's the season for growing things anyway!

So we've got a few projects on the go at the moment...

1) Tulips from Amsterdam

The ones my parents gifted us a few months ago have begun to bloom - some seem to have died! The second pot weren't buried deep enough, as when it rained the soil was compacted and so exposed them again, so I asked my husband to help the twins replant them while I was out one day... Still no success compared to the others, so I had a look myself and realised they'd been planted upside down! Replanted (so for the 3rd time lol) in an attempt to save them but it looks like it was unsuccessful... But still a good teaching point into why they didn't grow so nothing lost there!

The ones which have blossomed look beautiful though. 👍

2) Chinese beans

My sister brought some beans back from China (wish I'd remembered to take a photo of them before planting as they had Chinese characters written on them!) though she's not sure what species they are exactly. 😂 So we decorated some old glass honey jars with the girls' names and planted the beans in there. I'm hoping the glass means we'll be able to get a peek at some of the roots! These are on our kitchen windowsill so it's easy to remember to water them and easy to keep an eye on the different stages of growth. 😁

3) Sunflower investigation

A few years ago we grew some sunflowers in the back garden which grew to an impressive height, taller than the fence! When we grew them, I decided where to plant them based on where I thought would get the most sunlight... So this year, I suggested an investigation to see if the amount of sunlight really makes that much of a difference to how plants grow. So we planted a few on the side of the garden the original sunflowers went and a few on the opposite side of the garden, in the shade of the fence. No mention of soil quality at this age - we're making sure to water them both the same amount and assuming that the only factor being changed is amount of sunlight!

Unfortunately, our poor sunflower seedlings have had a rough start... One week, my husband forgot they were there and we lost a few to the lawnmower. 😑 But rather than give up, we replanted the ones which seemed mostly intact and Alhamdulillah a few survived! But then the next weekend it was incredibly windy (Storm Hannah I think it was called?) and from our survivors, there were a couple more casualties blown over or away completely! So now we have two strongish looking ones on each side, and maybe a couple of late sprouters which may end up growing to flower... Who knows! But again, some more interesting learning opportunities so no great loss. 😊

So for these, the girls need to remember to water them (usually when I'm putting out/taking in the laundry!) and also weed them when they look like they need it (why do they need weeding? So the other plants don't take their water and nutrients from the soil, so the sunflowers can grow bigger!). Maybe next year we can do another investigation where we only weed some sunflowers and leave the others to get overrun. 😀

4) Nature walks

The HE friend we went on the Clent Hills walk with is organising regular meet ups at similar locations for more long walks. We went to Clent Hills again on Sunday with my husband, to see how far Z could manage since some of the routes aren't pushchair accessible, and mashaAllah we were out for just over 2 hours (with stops!) and she was able to walk to the top and take the steeper route down again. The walks which are planned with our friend should be around 45min max, so inshaAllah we plan on joining them as they come up over the next few months.

Just being in nature sparked up lots of casual conversations and learning, e.g. what are pine cones for? How do trees breathe if they don't have lungs? Identifying different species of plants (daisies, dandelions, bluebells, buttercups, nettles, blackberry bushes, etc.), comparing the shapes and textures of leaves and petals, etc. etc.

The walks have also been great for building confidence (e.g. keeping balance when going down steeper, gravelly sections of path - thinking they can't do it then proving themselves wrong!), problem solving (looking for the sensible places to climb hills, i.e. less steep, not as muddy, good footholds, etc.) pushing past their comfort zones (they wanted to try climbing a bigger tree on Sunday and, with a little encouragement, managed to get higher than they have before!) and of course, building stamina and endurance. 💪

Spring Rainbows

So after the extended writing task we did previously, I decided to take inspiration from the Big Write initiative and continue giving the girls the opportunity to write a longer uninterrupted piece every fortnight.

As Spring has just begun, I decided to use it as the next prompt - as it was easy to get some firsthand experience and so start some good discussions encouraging rich vocabulary before sitting down to do the writing task.

You can download the writing prompt here.

Before showing the girls the task, I took them to Martineau Gardens so they could actually do the colour hunting challenge mentioned in the prompt. We took photos of the things they found and when we got home I turned these into a collage:

You can download our picture collage here. (the bird pictures I took from Google, since I wasn't able to get a good photo of the robin and magpie we spotted!)

On a different day, before writing, we used their photos as inspiration for a spring time rainbow painting. First, they drew the outline of a rainbow onto white card. Then, they used their photos as reference for drawing pictures in the corresponding stripe of each colour of the rainbow. Finally, they coloured it in using both wax crayons and watercolours - which was their choice! Z did her own version too, mashaAllah. I was really impressed with her patience, which I think is better when she's together with her big sisters as she wants to copy them!

When it came to the actual writing, I think I picked a day when they weren't in the mood for it... We recapped their current target of writing in past tense (and staying in the same tense!) then set the timer for 30min, put a video on YouTube for background Spring sounds, wrote in silence - just as in last time with the desert prompt - but they weren't that motivated this time. Rather than force them to continue or force the issue, I sat with them individually afterwards so they could give themselves feedback: a mark out of 5 for how well they kept in past tense (they both thought they did well at this), a mark out of 5 for how good their descriptions were and a target for next time. M especially was disappointed with herself ("I didn't write enough though!") so insha'Allah they might be more focused next time? I think going to the gardens, which I thought was good for inspiration, might actually have made it more difficult since they were trying to write from memory rather than their imagination? Will try something completely different next time, insha'Allah!

The Importance of Exercise

Continuing with our Science theme of the human body, I decided to move on to how and why we should keep healthy. This week we'll focus on exercise (which ties in well with our Literacy topic since we're looking at East Asia so martial arts!) as a way of both strengthening our muscles (including our hearts! And increasing stamina) and for reducing fat (why it's unhealthy to have too much fat as well as why we need some!) as well as how exercise can make us feel happier and improve our mood.

Some other home edding friends had planned a trip to Clent Hills this week, so I thought it'd be good to tag along. The drive was just over half an hour and it only took us around 20min to climb to the top - going at a steady pace (I was wearing A in the sling and pushing Z in the pram!). Once at the top the kids played around together admiring the views and we enjoyed a nice picnic. Alhamdulillah the weather was really good for a walk outdoors. The girls enjoyed themselves and said we should do the walk again with Papa next time - and Z could probably manage walking too inshaAllah. 💪

We had lots of discussions about the importance of exercise throughout the week (with examples!) then we made a simple spider diagram on the whiteboard together to summarise the ideas and left it on display for a few days - until we needed that whiteboard again.

Planting Tulips

My parents gave us some tulip bulbs as a souvenir from their mini break to Amsterdam. There were 8 bulbs in the pack, and we had 4 pots (one for each girl!), so the twins worked out they could plant 2 bulbs in each pot... They could do their own, and Mama could plant the baby's for her. 😁

The twins had gardening gloves (bought last year!) whilst the toddler didn't... So the former used their hands to put the compost in whilst the latter used a trowel - and we reused the compost from the dwarf beans we had planted in the Summer. The girls, MashaAllah, remembered which way up to plant the bulbs from their time at the allotments and knew how to half fill the pot with compost, make a well for the bulbs to go inside root way down, then cover them up with more compost.

When they were done, I arranged the pots in age order (left to right) against the fence which gets most sun in the garden. Insha'Allah they'll bloom in the Spring without any more work from us!

Whilst in the garden (we've not played in it since the end of Summer, really) we noticed some sunflowers had grown in the grass! We planted sunflowers last February and really looked after them - watering them daily and weeding the area around them on a consistent basis. The sunflowers which grew last year were taller than the fence, MashaAllah! And the girls were really proud of them. 🌻🌻 We didn't plant any this year since our youngest was born in July, yet somehow some sunflowers had grown... How? The girls worked out some seeds must have fallen from our old plants and planted themselves in the soil! When the shoots and leaves grew in Autumn, they looked familiar... So we asked Papa to mow around them when he did the grass. Now it was almost Winter they had finally grown heads and we were right to have guessed they might have been sunflowers! But these sunflowers were nowhere near the size of our old ones... Why? Because we didn't look after them! So this was a good lesson in the importance of weeding and watering. 👌

They did actually bloom not long after, but I forgot to take any photos of them before they died. 🙈

Using the 5 Senses for Descriptions

As planned - albeit a few months later! - I took the girls to the first of several different locations so they could practise using their five senses to write more detailed descriptions. We also recapped all five verbs in Arabic, too.

Our first stop was the woodland area of Martineau Gardens.

We focused on one sense at a time, making notes of at least one example for each, then adding in anything extra to any other box once they'd got into it (we walked round with clipboards which they loved the novelty of!).

You can download the worksheet template here.

Later on at home, they used their notes to write sentences underneath a picture of where we went.

First, we read a couple of examples of descriptions from their favourite book series at the moment: Willow Valley. The opening chapters always begin with a nice description, so we read a couple of examples and talked about which senses were being used for each thing.

e.g. "It was a bright, sunny morning in Willow Valley. Butterflies danced through meadows of clover, birds sang in the trees, and shimmering dragonflies fluttered over the river. The cave-houses on the rolling green hills all had their doors open wide as happy little animals pattered out to play in the sunshine." [Willow Valley - A Seaside Rescue, by Tracey Corderoy]

I asked them if that description was better than just saying, for example, "In Willow Valley there were butterflies, birds and dragonflies. Animals played outside." They said the description in the book was better because they could imagine being there!

I let them free write, so no spelling aid, reminders about capitals and full stops, spaces between words, etc... and put the sandtimer on for 30min so they had a set time to write in - in between talking to each other and to me before they wrote their sentences down! One of them finished within the 30min, the other decided she wanted to write for a little longer. I'm thinking of using this piece of writing for some editing work later on, giving them the chance to check for mistakes and improve.

You can download the second worksheet template here.

I left a blank in the title so we can re-use it for a different location and they will already be familiar with what to do. I might print out a photo again, or leave that space empty for them to draw a picture... Or we might link to ICT and have them type up their description into the file on the laptop. Will see how it goes, insha'Allah!

Planting the seeds...

Finally got round to planting this year's seeds... The girls have a little patch at the end of the garden which I dug up for them last year to plant flowers in - they wanted to do it again this year so we bought three packets of assorted (easy to grow!) flowers from Asda (they always seem to have a special offer on this time of year 😄) for them to sow.

I prepared the soil for them by digging up the weeds and raking it (they did pulling up weeds at the allotments earlier this week, and these weeds were quite deep rooted and tough! So I thought it was fine to let them just play in the garden while I worked... lol), they pre-watered the soil with their watering cans (again, from Asda! Kids-sized, metal cans for £2.50 - one pink, one orange, one turquoise), had a packet of seeds each to spread thinly over the ground (I helped the toddler 😁), I covered the seeds with the raked soil, then they watered the ground once more.

Finally, I stuck in the bird scarers (made from foam tulip heads and an old CD stuck onto a wooden lolly stick) the kids made at the allotments at the end of last year and which have otherwise just been cluttering our kitchen window sill. 😂

Now to wait... Insha'Allah they should flower by next month - so now the girls are responsible for watering them on all the days it doesn't rain, especially if it's hot and sunny!

Pine Cone Bird Feeders

We made these as part of our (free!) weekly allotments session, organised by a local children's centre. 🌱

You will need:
Pine cones
Peanut butter + spoon
Mixed seeds + shallow container (e.g. tupperware)
Wool + scissors

1) Spread peanut butter generously over the pine cone.
2) Pour some seeds into a shallow container and roll the pine cone around inside until all the peanut butter is covered.
3) Cut and tie a piece of wool to the top of the cone.
4) Hang the bird feeder in the garden. 🐦🐦🐦


This was simple enough for the twins to do independently (I just helped with tieing the knot in the wool) and my 2 year old enjoyed making one as well!

The peanut butter serves as a nutritious "glue" to stick the seeds on, but you can use alternative bird-friendly fats instead if you/your child has a peanut allergy, e.g. vegetable shortening as a vegetarian option, or something like suet.