Introduction to plant parts and the plant life cycle

Today was my first session at Charles La Trobe Kingsbury. I spent about 20 minutes with each Prep/One class and ran through the same activities. I used large pictures to introduce the ideas of “trees”, “grasses” and “bushes/shrubs” and plant parts: leaves, branches, trunk, roots.

Students generally knew the names of plant parts but did not really know what shrubs or bushes were. When asked ‘what do you call a small tree?’ one boy responded “bonsai”. One girl commented that fig trees had their roots above the ground.

We played a modified version of "head, shoulders, knees and toes” as trees “leaves, branches, trunk and roots” and then "Simon says” also as trees e.g. “Simon says wave your branches in the air”.
The students really enjoyed these activities.

We then ran through the plant life cycle from seed, seedling, sapling to adult tree, introducing the idea that flowers indicate an adult stage. Correlations were drawn to the human life cycle: baby, toddler, teenager, adult. Students seemed amazed at the idea that flowers indicated an adult plant, and that very small plants could be adults as well as big trees.

We then play/interpreted the life cycle by acting out the plant life cycle, growing from seeds, sprouting leaves and growing into tall trees.

With one group there was time to touch some plants that I had brought in, including a paper daisy.

The images used in 'Introduction to Plants' is available as a resource for teachers.

- Juli Atkinson (education staff)