Things That Grow- Week 1

Theme 6- Things That Grow

Children will explore how living things grow, using observations, experiments, and books. Through story time readings, children will hear about ducks who find a special home, a new baby on a farm, a boy who grows from baby to school age, and a girl who discovers the joys of growing vegetables. Children continue to learn about leters, sounds, and rhyming words, and participate in many other math, science, music, poetry, and art activities.

Theme Concepts:

-Living things grow and have life cycles.

-Living things reproduce, and the offspring are the same kind of plant or animal as their parents.

-Living things need food, water, and proper living conditions to survive.
-Immature living things need special care.
-Living things interact, and among animals ther are predators and prey.

Book This Week:

Growing Vegetable Soup by Lois Ehlert

The Ugly Vegetables by Grace Lin

Small Groups:
- Math- Which is Longer? - Children will compare various classroom objects. Vocabulary for this activity include; long, longer, and longest.
-Science- Making Greenhouses- Children will decorate their greenhouses. Then we will discuss what makes seeds grow. We will place a lima bean seed in a baggie with a papertowel and add water. We will put them in our classroom to observe them later.
-Weighing Veggies and Fruit- Using a balance scale, children will compare 2 food at a time to see what weighs more and less.
-Planting Seeds- We will plant green bean seeds in soil and discuss the sequence of growing from a seed to a plant to get food.
-Making vegetable soup- We will cut(with plastic knives) different vegetables in small groups. Then we will cook the veggies to make soup. Then we will taste the soup and create a chart to show who liked the soup and who did not like the soup. We will discuss our results of our chart.

Centers

-Dramatic Play- Making vegetable soup

-Sensory Table- Dried Beans for exploration

-Art Table- Printing Veggies on paper with paint

-Science- Observing Tadpoles and observing our green bean plants(observation journals)

-Blocks- Building and Bends Blocks( to make flower gardens)

-Math- Counting Seeds Activity
-Library- Books about growing

Songs, Word Play, and Letters
-Green Grass Grows All Around
-Grow song
-When I was one (a growing poem)
-Letter Garden- Each child will be given a fruit or vegetable. A "seed letter" will be planted and they will be asked if they have a fruit or vegetable that has the beginning sound of that letter.