Poppy remembrance day garland

On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in 1918, the First World War ended. This is known as Remembrance Day or Poppy Day because the destruction of the war disturbed the lands and transformed bare land into fields of red poppies that grew around the fallen soilders. Poppies are now used to show our respect to all the soldiers that died for peace and freedom.
We made a paper poppy garland to teach my children and show our respect to this special day.

Tissue Flowers

I love tissue flowers. They look fab and are great for so many different projects. All you need is a few different colours of tissue paper, fuzzy sticks, and a pair of scissors.

I Really Wonder What Plant Im Growing

I came across a Charlie and Lola episode where Charlie teaches Lola about growing plants.  This fun, educational ten minute clip is a great way to recap what plants need to grow. My children were very excited pointing out things they knew throughout the episode. 

Flower Detectives

We have recently moved to a new village and a nice sunny afternoon was a perfect chance to get out and explore our new surroundings. I believe that education should be made fun by incorporating it into normal everyday activities. On this occasion we used our imaginations and became super sleuths for the day and embarked on a adventure flower hunt. Before we set off we equipped ourselves with cardboard magnifying glasses which my children had decorated earlier.

I also printed a poster with pictures of flowers we may find to check off along the way and off we set with our cameras to explore our village.

Runner Bean Experiment

This experiment was very nostalgic for me, I remember being very excited to show my parents my runner bean I had grown at school. It is simple yet very effective and fun way to show children what plants need to grow.

Firstly we looked at the effect that light has on the growth of plants. We filled two glasses full of wet cotton wool balls and planted the beans between the cotton and the glass so we could easily observe what was happening. We then used lolly pop sticks to label one glass light and the other dark.

Light vs Dark

The light glass was then placed on a sunny window sill and the dark was placed inside a cupboard. Over the next couple of weeks we checked our beans at the same time each day, watering when necessary and took pictures of our observations.

Day two

After two days we had our first sprout. My children were a little surprised to find that it was the bean planted in the dark. I explained to them that plants were very clever and the bean planted in the dark will grow faster because it needs to grow higher to try find some sunlight.

Day four

On day four the light plant had finally grown a sprout. In hind sight I should of soaked the beans in water over night before starting the experiment to make it a little quicker. My children get really excited checking on their beans everyday but this is quite a long experiment, so it is a good idea to also plant some quick growing plants in the garden or grow a sproutapouch. Children can get quite impatient waiting for things to grow.

Day 9

Day 10

Day 11

Day 12

                                                      

 By day twelve both plants had sprouted and had a stem and two leaves. The noticeable difference being that the dark plant was taller paler and had smaller leaves.

Day 13

Day 16

Sproutapouch

I discovered these fab sow and seal greenhouse in a bag micro salad growing kits and felt compelled to use them in my project.

The kids had loads of fun setting it up and watching it grow. The really good thing about sproutapouch is once they are set up no further watering is required and they are fully grown in 6-10 days and ready to eat. They were even more amazed when we got to eat it. I think even though they knew food came from various parts of the plant, actually growing it themselves and eating it made them more aware of this.

Set up is really quick and simple. First of all we placed the compost disc in the pouch, added water, and to my children's amazement  the disc instantly expanded to eight times the size. The children then enjoyed getting their fingers dirty fluffing up the soil and spreading it across the bottom of the pouch. We then sprinkled our seeds, gave it a little pat and we we were all set.  We sealed the bag, placed it in a sunny window, and the next morning the seeds had already started to germinate.

Project Plants

The magic of spring is on our doorsteps and all the daffodils are starting to come to life again. I want my children to experience this magic and show them how amazing plants really are. Thus project plants was born. Our first project was learning the different parts of a flower.  All children like to participate in arts and crafts, so instead of labelling a picture I thought it would be fun to make a diagram ourselves using different materials. We used pipe cleaners, coloured card, paint pens, and glitter glue.

by Macey aged 4 

Nathan aged 6