First Grade Garden Lesson 4 - Math in the Garden

This week we measured and counted in the garden!

Objective

Use math in the garden.

Group Activity

• Define a sundial.  Describe how it uses shadows to tell time.
• Talk about the imported cabbage worm.  We had found some of these worms on our broccoli plants and we put them in a jar.  By this week they had crystallized and one had hatched into a butterfly!  We talked about how the female butterflies have brown on their wings and the male butterflies have black dots on their wings.  At the end of the day we let the butterfly go! 

Garden Activity

At the garden we measured a plant with a ruler and recorded it.  We will draw a graph to record growth.  Each group measured what they planted.

Table 1

This table made a sundial.
They cut out the sundial from http://analemmatic.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/papercraft.pl  This website has a script where you enter your zip code, time zone, and whether or not you have daylights savings time (the rest of the page you can ignore) and it gives you a sundial that you can print out!  It's pretty cool (but I think it only works for the northern hemisphere).
Then cut out the gnomon.  Link for gnomon is here.  Cut it out.  Then cut on the solid line.  This will make two tabs.  Fold each tab a different direction on the dotted line.  This will create tabs to hold the gnomon in place.

On the sundial, cut along the '12' line to the center of the sundial.  Insert the gnomon so that the bottom point of the triangle is at the center of the sundial.
Tape the tabs down to the bottom of the sundial.  See diagram.

Use the sundial to tell time (it wasn't sunny enough for us :-(

 

Table 2 and 3

These tables did scavenger hunts.  One table had to measure objects in the garden.  The other table has to count some of the things in the garden.  See worksheet here for what we did!

Enjoy!