Second Grade Garden - Lesson 1 Planting

We were all very excited to start gardening again!  The first lesson gave a fun introduction by looking at seeds, planting seeds and guessing how well seeds will grow!

Lesson Goals:

• Plant the garden
• Understand the parts of a seeds
• Participate in the scientific process by forming a hypothesis

Structure:

The class of approximately 30 second graders is split into 3 groups of about 10 each.  There is one teacher and one or two volunteer parents.  At the start of the lesson the overview material is covered.  Then the class is broken into its groups.  Each lesson is given 45 minutes.

Overview:

• A seed is composed of the embryo (the baby plant), the seed coat, and the cotyledon (the seed food). 

• Hypothesis: a seed needs love to grow.  Seeds need water, sun and soil but how about some love?  There are studies that show that when music is played for a plant it grows better.  Other scientists have demonstrated that talking to plants improves growth while others have tested how plants respond to certain tones.  In this experiment, "Love" is defined as talking to the plant.  There will be two plants in each sample.  The garden volunteer will take the plants home and keep them somewhere sunny.  The plants will all get watered at the same time and talked to on the following schedule:
• "No love" plants will not be talked to.
• "Some love" plants will have "Good Morning" and maybe a short song.
• "Love plants" will be brought inside for about an hour every day to enjoy the constant chatting that happens indoors.

Table 1

Materials needed:

• worksheet
• soaked lima bean seeds (soak the night before)
• glue

Dissect a seed.  Pull the seed coat off and open the seed to find the embryo.  Glue each of the parts to the paper. 
Worksheet (click picture for ppt link)

Table 2

Materials needed:

• worksheet
• pots
• seeds (we used radish seeds)
• soil
• wipes
• pencils

Plant a seed and make an educated guess at how the plants will grow to fill out the worksheet.  Label each group as follows:

1. No Love
2. Some Love
3. Lots of Love

Worksheet

Garden

At the garden we planted sweet peas, carrots, radishes and broccoli.  Each group planted one row of seeds and one broccoli plant.  Each student had a chance to plant a seed or be a part of the planting the broccoli.


Enjoy!