- children’s plants
- grow
- leaf
- plant
MA Standards:
Speaking and Listening/SL.PK.MA.1: Participate in collaborative conversations with diverse partners during daily routines and play.
Language/L.PK.MA.6: Use words and phrases acquired through conversations, listening to books read aloud, activities, and play.
Head Start Outcomes:
Language Development/Receptive Language: Attends to language during conversations, songs, stories, or other learning experiences.
Language Development/Expressive Language: Uses language to express ideas and needs.
Logic and Reasoning/Reasoning and Problem Solving: Classifies, compares, and contrasts objects, events, and experiences.
Science Knowledge/Scientific Skills and Method: Observes and discusses common properties, differences, and comparisons among objects.
PreK Learning Guidelines:
English Language Arts/Language 2: Participate actively in discussions, listen to the ideas of others, and ask and answer relevant questions.
Talk Together: Plant Parts Animals Eat
© Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Department of Early Education and Care (Jennifer Waddell photographer). All rights reserved.
STEM Key Concepts: Plants grow in many places; Some plants start from seeds; Many foods that animals, including humans, eat come from plants; We eat certain leaves, roots, fruits, and seeds, Understand that a seed holds what a plant needs to make more of itself
ELA Focus Skills: Listening and Speaking, Vocabulary
Educator Prep: Wash sprouts before children handle them.
Review the plants that children observed yesterday that showed evidence of being eaten by animals. Discuss how some plant parts that animals eat are above ground and some are below ground.
- Focus attention on children’s plants and ask children to identify the parts of each plant that they will be able to eat once the plants are grown. Explain how different parts of some plants are eaten, for example, the garlic plant—the bulb (cloves) that grows under the ground and the leaves that grow above ground can both be eaten.
- Ask, How do you think animals get to foods that are underground? Did you see any evidence of animals digging up seeds or plants yesterday when you were observing?
Have children point to and identify the part of the plants they are growing that they think animals—including humans—will eat once the plants are grown. Encourage children to say whether that part of the plant grows above ground or underground.