Year 1 - Plants

Introduction

In our most recent Topic Thursday, we were learning all about plants. We did some science, writing and art activities and we had lots of fun! Check out some of our pictures and videos below to find out more.

By the end of the unit, we learnt:

  • To identify and name a variety of common wild and garden plants, including deciduous and evergreen trees

  • To identify the basic structure of a variety of common flowering plants and trees

  • To add white to colours to make tints

Keywords we used:

leaf, leaves, flower, petal, root, trunk, branch, stem, bark, stalk, weed, grass, tree, shrub, deciduous tree, evergreen tree, bud

Prior Learning

Before our Topic Thursday, we were reading the book 'Lila and the Secret of Rain', which is about a girl who experiences drought in her village in Kenya. We had lots of interesting discussions about what crops and plants need to survive, and we spoke about plants that can survive without much water. We also did some nature walks around the school to take pictures of flowers, weeds, deciduous trees and evergreen trees.

Writing

We wrote 'super sentences' about the features of different plants (rosemary, daisies, lavender and tulips).


Nature Walk

We enjoyed looking for examples of deciduous trees, evergreen trees, flowers and weeds on our nature walk. We took some photos on the iPads!


Plant Detectives

We got to be 'Plant Detectives' and had fun identifying the different parts of a plant. We used magnifying glasses to help us see everything clearly, and we matched the parts of the plants to the key words on our word banks.

Check out this video of some of our plant detectives in action...

Plant detectives.m4v

Plant Sorting

We sorted some of the pictures we had taken into categories. Some of us even wrote about the difference between deciduous trees and evergreen trees!

Describing Plants

Katherine brought in some rosemary from her garden and we enjoyed rubbing the leaves and smelling our fingers - it made us feel very calm and relaxed. We wrote some 'super sentences' to describe rosemary, lavender, daisies and tulips.

Leaf Hunt!

We went on a leaf hunt to find leaves of all different colours, sizes and textures. When we got back to class, we experimented with adding white and yellow to green to make tints - we ordered our leaves from light to dark and tried to match them to our paint colours!