TpT Seller Challenge Week 3: Make Your Masterpiece

Okay, I am WAY late on writing my blog post about last week's challenge, but it's because I have been having WAY too much fun watching YouTube tutorials, reading guided blog posts, and playing around with customizing my blog layout... I am pretty impressed with what I've been able to figure out so far! 

Now, back on topic! I had SO MUCH fun with last week's challenge! I will be the first to admit that I have the tendency to be a little bit of a procrastinator. I am the worst at starting a million little projects/tasks at once, getting overwhelmed, and then not finishing any of them. It's BAD. It's even worse during the school year when I have my own million little projects/tasks I want to do plus the million little projects/tasks I am being told I have to do. 

Surely I am not the only one who can relate to the picture above?! ;) Anywho, we did our Plant Unit about 3-4 weeks before school ended... You know, only one of the busiest times of the year. ;) So, while I had these great intentions of creating this awesome Plant Unit to share with all of you, I ended up only making the recording sheets I needed for my class and then falling asleep on my couch instead of finishing putting it all together for TpT. Before I knew it, one week become two weeks, two weeks became a month, then a month became half way through summer and I still hadn't finished it! So, I decided to take this challenge as my chance to finish what I started two months ago. Without further adieu, here is my Parts of a Plant Recording Sheets MASTERPIECE! :) 

I am so happy with how the final product turned out and owe a HUGE thank you to Bailey Riley from Miss Riley's Happy Campers and Rachael Fiddler from Swimming with the Rest of the School for revising and editing it for me!! I loved that this challenge required us to pair up and collaborate with another TpTer- always great to meet fellow creators! :)  

If you follow me on Instagram, you have probably seen me post a few pictures about how this was my absolute favorite science unit. It was so much fun! The kiddos absolutely loved every second of it, and I loved every second of planning and creating it for them. Because of that, I am so excited to finally have this product finished and ready to share for others to use in their classroom. I have no doubt your kiddos will have just as much fun with it as mine did! 

Our plant unit lasted two weeks. The first week, we simply looked at plants as a whole. We discussed what plants are, where plants can be found, how plants help us, what plants need to survive, etc. and identified the different parts. 

The second week, we dug in deeper and learned more about the actual job of each plant part. Each day we focused on a new plant part, starting with roots. Each part had a simple activity and its own special recording sheet for the students to keep track of their learning. We created this flip book throughout the week:

Here's how each individual day played out:

Day One: Roots

To learn what role roots play/ why their job is important, we bought two plants and cut the roots off of one of them to see what would happen. 

Day Two: Stem

To show how water travels up the stem, we placed a carnation and a stock of celery into a cup of water with food coloring. I discovered two tricks that make this experiment most effective: 1) the more food coloring you add, the better! And, 2) you have to trim the stem for it to work and the more of the stem you trim, the better it works! 

Day One

 Day Two

Day Three: Leaves

Okay, I wasn't creative enough to come up with an activity for this one... We just watched a video about the job of leaves on PebbleGo and completed the recording sheet. 

Day 4: Flower

This is my favorite activity we did all year! I'll admit, it's a little lot messy, but it is totally worth it!! The kids loved it and it was such an engaging way to help them better understand the job of flowers and how pollination works! 

1) They drew a flower on the paper bag then colored a bee with two holes at the bottom for their fingers. 

2) I went around and filled each bag with Cheetos. 

3&4) starting at their bag, the "bees" (students) flew around from "flower" (paper bag) to flower, eating from each one... I let my kiddos actually eat the Cheeto, however if you're a germaphobe, you could have them take a Cheeto out and set it to the side/throw it away. That's not nearly as much fun though. ;) The only rule is (whether they eat the Cheetos or throw them away), they CANNOT lick their fingers or rub any of the "pollen" (Cheeto dust) off of their fingers. 

5.6&7) After the "bees" (students) have eaten from every "flower" (paper bag), they will pick a flower to wipe their "pollen" (Cheeto dust) on.

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The Parts of a Plant Recording Sheets packet includes detailed direction sheets for each of the above activities as well as the recording sheets the students will use to document their learning. 

Download Resource Here 

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