- circles of white construction paper (big enough to fit in a paper cup)
- crayons
- green marker
- markers
- masking tape
- paper cups
- scissors
- strips of brown construction paper (to fit around cups)
- wooden craft sticks
- down
- grow
- plant
- up
MA Standards:
Speaking and Listening/SL.PK.MA.5: Create representations of experiences or stories (e.g., drawings, constructions with blocks or other materials, clay models) and explain them to others.
MA Draft STE Standards:
Life Sciences/From Molecules to Organisms: Inheritance and Variation of Traits/LS1/3.A: Describe/draw and compare the body parts of animals (including themselves) and plants they are investigating [System] and explain functions of some of the observable body parts. [Structure and Function]
Head Start Outcomes:
Approaches to Learning/Initiative and Curiosity: Demonstrates flexibility, imagination, and inventiveness in approaching tasks and activities.
Literacy Knowledge/Early Writing:Uses scribbles, shapes, pictures, and letters to represent objects, stories, experiences, or ideas.
PreK Learning Guidelines:
English Language Arts/Language 3: Communicate personal experiences or interests.
English Language Arts/Composition 16: Use their own words or illustrations to describe their experiences, tell imaginative stories, or communicate information about a topic of interest.
Pop-Up Plants
© Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Department of Early Education and Care (Jennifer Waddell photographer). All rights reserved.
Skill Focus: Creative Expression, Fine Motor Skills, Vocabulary
Educator Prep: Cut a slit in the bottom of a paper cup big enough for a wooden craft stick to pass through.
Tell children they are going to make a pop-up flower.
- Hold up the brown paper and say, This is the soil or dirt. Ask children what they might see if they dug in soil. (seeds, worms, pebbles, etc.) Have them draw these objects on the paper. Then help them tape or staple the drawing of soil around the cup.
- Distribute the circles of construction paper and tell children that the circle will be one part of a plant that grows up from the soil. Have children draw on the circle a plant, flower, herb, or vegetable they are familiar with.
- Then provide children with a craft stick and tell them it will be the stem—the part of the plant that holds up a flower or a vegetable. Ask children to tell you the color of most plant stems. Tell them they can color the craft stick green like a plant stem.
Help children tape the stem (craft stick) to the back of their plant (circle). Finally, help children assemble their plant by guiding them to push the bottom of the craft stick through the slit in the cup. Once that is done, have them pull the flower until it is hidden inside the dirt (cup). Then have them slowly push the flower out of the dirt. Encourage children to tell a story about their plant as it “grows.”