“Nurture through Nature” is our phase of learning in Year 1. So, with this in mind we began our year by sharing The Tiny Seed by Eric Carle. This wonderful book stimulated the children’s interest in the conditions required for plant growth and our inquiry project came to life. Since then the students have worked individually and collaboratively to research seeds, plants and life cycles, made observations and predictions, learned about the parts of a plant and their functions, planted beans and recorded their growth.
During the last few weeks we conducted an experiment where we planted grass seeds and removed an element essential for their growth. All containers had the same quantity of grass seed but one had no sunlight, one had sand instead of soil, one had no water and another had everything required. Much to our amazement, the grass seeds without sunlight grew the most, but the grass was yellow rather than green! The students were intrigued by this outcome, which prompted further questioning and research to find out about the chemical chlorophyll!