As curious as George, Milky Way students wonder about what plants need to grow. After our rice planting activity two weeks ago, they drew what rice plants need to grow and most of them have great drawings and ideas which was a good assessment to know their understanding about the needs of plants. On Tuesday, we started to do some plant growth experiments. The class was divided into four groups, each group had to decide what they think plants need to grow, and started planting. Unexpectedly, two groups decided to try sunlight, water, soil, and air and two groups decided to try water, soil, and sunlight. But because we want to really know if the vegetable we are going to plant will grow on different conditions, we also tried the following:
- Water
- Water, soil
- Soil, sunlight
- Sunlight, water
In their planting experiment, little by little they are learning to communicate with their friends, make decisions as a group, solve problems, and take turns. When we watered and looked at them on Thursday, we didn’t see any sprouts yet, but on Friday morning, we saw lots of sprouts in the pots. Each student observed and drew or wrote about their observations in their experiment notebooks. “I can see leaves! Pot C doesn’t have any leaves!” We will continue to observe and record the growth of each plant. We can’t wait to see the results of our experiments and see which experiment is the best for growing radish.
Last week, we went to the garden to check the growth of our vegetables in the school garden and we noticed that the okra hadn’t sprouted yet. We are so happy to see that the cherry tomatoes are growing and growing. We measured how tall each tree was and we found out that tomato C was the tallest and tomato A was the shortest. Why? One student said, “I think because tomato A doesn’t get enough sunlight.” What a good observation! We counted how many flowers each tomato tree has and most of them have either 3 or 4 flowers. “They will become tomatoes!” After a week, finally the okra has sprouts! On Friday, we were also surprised to see the tomato fruits!
For UOI 1, we also discussed how much sleep they usually get and how much sleep they need based on their age. Most of them were able to reach the target average hours of sleep, but we noticed that they still feel sleepy when they wake up in the morning. According to them, to improve their sleep, they need to sleep earlier, eat their dinner faster, or listen to music.
The first mud play experience was really fun for MW. The joy on their faces says it all! We will start playing in the pool outside next week, so please don’t forget to bring your swimwear and sign their pool card.
Thank you for reading our blog and enjoy your weekend!🥰
