Lesson 1

Today, as we always do at the beginning of a topic, we did a test to see what we already know. This helps Miss Savage understand what knowledge we already have so that she can plan our lessons to fit that. 

After the test, Miss Savage showed us some celery, flowers, food colouring and pots. She'd already put the plants in a separate, clear container each. We then decided what we might want to investigate using these items and agreed that we would put the food colouring in the water and see how it changes the colour of the plants. 

Miss Savage explained to us the importance of making sure our test is 'fair'. She explained to us that this means we only change the thing that we are measuring so that we can be sure that any changes between the plants is due to the food colouring and not something else. We decided that we needed to keep these things the same:
 

- the amount of water each plant has;

- the amount of food colouring we put in each time; 

- the amount of plants in each pot; and

- the size of the pot.

We also decided that we needed to leave one plant with no food colouring in its water so that we could use it to compare the changes in the other plants. 

We'll be checking in our celery and flowers daily to see what changes (if any!!) happen...

Lesson 2

At the beginning of the lesson we checked out our celery and flowers from last week and... well... that investigation hasn't gone quite to plan. We noticed that the flowers and celery with the food colouring in the water were dying much more quickly than the flowers and celery with just plain water. 

This isn't a problem though! We know that science doesn't always go to plan and that this gave us a good opportunity to discuss why we felt it hadn't work and what we could do next time to try and see a different reaction. We knew that the problem was relating to the food colouring because of the difference compared to the plain water plants (the 'control' plants) and so it was either the type of food colouring meant the plants couldn't drink the water or the concentration (amount of) food colouring meant the same thing. 

So, we repeated the experiment with 'natural' food colouring from ASDA and we used only a couple of drops this time... watch this space!

We also looked at the different parts of the plant and discussed that, much like the different parts of our bodies, the parts of a plant each have a different purpose:

• The flower is designed to attract insects to come and collect the pollen and make more plants. They attract insects by being colourful and having a lovely scent.
• The stem is designed to keep the plant standing upright - much like our own spine!
• The leaves are designed to catch light and turn it into food. We learnt that the parts of a plant that make the leaves green catch the light and turn it into food using a process called photosynthesis.
• The roots are designed to take water and nutrients from the soil to help to feed the plants. A plant in the sunlight with no water and nutrients will still not survive for long! 

Lesson 3

In lesson three we started to think about the things that plants need to survive. We thought about five different things plants might need to live:

• water;
• light;
• soil;
• space; and
• warmth.
   

We then, in our home tables, designed our own experiments to test whether or not plants do need these things, and if they do, to what extent these things are needed. Watch this space!

Lesson 4

Today we started to look more closely at the flower of a plant. We already know from previous lessons that the flower's role is to attract insects, but we looked more closely at why this is. Miss Savage told us that the flower of the plant helps the plant to reproduce. We broke down the word 'reproduce' into its prefix (thanks Darcy!) 're' and root word 'produce' to figure out that this word means 'to make again'. Therefore we now know that they help the plant to make more plants. 

Then we started to look more closely at the different parts of the flower and their roles. We began by watching this helpful video, which introduced us to some of the trickier scientific names of the parts of the flower. After that, we had a closer look at some daffodils that Miss Savage brought in for us. We learnt that the main parts of the flower are:

• The stamen: This is made up of the anther and the filament. Its role is to make pollen, which is then passed on to other plants.
• The carpel or pistil: This is made up of the stigma, the style and the ovary. The pollen from another plant is stuck on the sticky head of the stigma and passes down the style into the ovary, which then makes seeds.
• The petals: The petals' role is to look pretty to attract insects who pass the pollen from one plant to another.
• The sepal is the part at the bottom of the flower and helps to protect the flower while it is growing (essentially, think of a flower in bud - that's the sepal covering it). 

Here are some photos of us investigating the parts of the flower. (Bad news - Miss Savage's photo taking has not improved - sorry!)