Thursday, March 24, 2011

Botany: The Bean Seed

I put the" Bean Seed Work" on the shelf last night. Looking forward to seeing the kids work with this today. The goal of this work is for them to investigate the parts of the seed through a hands on approach and spend as much time as they like doing so. In the the test tube are lima beans that have been soaked overnight. A pair of tweezers that the child will use to transfer the bean to the petri dish and than start investigating. I really wished I had the small metal tweezers for this activity, but I have misplaced those. I added a tiny amount of red food coloring so that they would be able to identify the different parts better.
The children here are really into coloring so I also prepared a Parts of the Bean Seed booklet for them to complete. I don't have the wall space to tape this to the wall so the work can remain stationary for the child to use as a guide. So I made this moveable display where the child can carry this to their work space.
Materials for the child to complete the Bean Seed Booklet. After they have finished coloring I will help those who need my help to write the names of the parts, then they will staple the book together.
This is how the work looks on the shelf.

8 comments:

  1. Cool ideas! I love the beans that they can look at. Did you just soak them overnight in red water, or did you add the color after? What kind of bean did you use?

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  2. The movable display looks great. Where have you found such good materials?. I also like the way you prepared the experimental part. Great post. Thank you for sharing your activities they are very inspiring

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  3. Thank you for the nice comments!

    Stephanie, I soaked the lima beans in the water with the red food coloring.

    Ewa, I got the test tube from one of my science kit purchases. The tweezers also came with the set. I cut a board to make the booklet board. The cards came from Montessori Printshop. If you are looking for free the blog Walk Beside Me
    just posted her beautiful parts of the Bean Seed cards along with parts of the Leaf.

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  4. Thank you for the answer ;-) The printables from Walk Beside Me are great ;-)

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    1. Would you mind sharing the seed printables from the walk beside because I couldn't download it from the site anymore?

      Thank you.

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  5. So fun! We do a LOT of sprouting around here--must put bean and leaf labelling on my to-do list.

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  6. I just linked up to this post! We did the beans today and the girls LOVED it! Thanks for sharing!

    http://discoverydaysandmontessorimoments.blogspot.com/2011/05/parts-of-bean.html

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  7. Your bean seed activities are wonderful! I featured your photo and post in my Montessori-Inspired Gardening Unit at http://livingmontessorinow.com/2012/05/29/montessori-inspired-gardening-unit/

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