Year 2

Exploring with the Colours of Nature

Year 2 has been delving into our new unit of inquiry around how plants support other living things. After learning about plant resources, and how humans use plants to meet their needs, we explored the use of plant-based materials in creating natural paints. Mixing turmeric and suji powder with water gave us a brilliant, bright yellow paint and a deep, earthy green paint. Some of us experimented with beetroot, butterfly pea flowers, parsley and mangosteen to see what other colours we could create.

We used our natural colours to create our very own “colours of nature” canvas, showing creativity and expressing ourselves through art.

It’s Gardening Time!

After our wonderful Global Jaya School gardeners demonstrated how to plant seeds, we gathered our pots, seeds and soil and got our hands dirty. Students made observations about the soil and seeds, noticing that the soil was darker than ordinary sand, and that it contained dead leaves and plant parts that would give the soil more nutrients.

Now that our seeds are planted, we will take care of our plant and help it to grow. We will keep a plant journal on Seesaw to track how our plant is growing and what we are doing to help it grow in a healthy way.

Let’s Test It Out: Do Plants Really Need Water, Soil and Sunlight to Grow?

Year 2 has learned that plants, in order to grow well, need water, soil, sunlight and space. BUT, as scientists, we know that we need to test to see if what we have learned is true. Together, we experimented with planting seeds in 4 different cups. Cup 1 was planted like any normal plant: it received soil, water and sunlight. Cup 2, 3 and 4 each had one of these elements missing.

Our next step was to hypothesise and make a smart prediction about what we think would happen to the seed in each cup.

“I think [the seed in cup 1] will grow because it has water and soil and sunlight, and sunlight and water is very good because … they help plants grow.” - Anella

“I don’t think [the seed in] cup 2 will grow because it has no sunlight so I think it will just stay a seed.” - Aaliyah

“[The seed in cup 3] will die because it has no water. Water makes plants grow.” - Amora

“I think the seed [in cup 4] will die because it will have too much water every day” - Kanaya

Let’s Find Out: What is the Function of the Stem?

To inquire into the function of the stem of plants, Year 2 did a simple experiment involving food colouring. By hypothesising and observing, as well as connecting to prior knowledge, we were able to understand that the stem of the plant acts as a giant straw for the plant, sucking up water and transporting it to other parts of the plant. We could see the water travelling through the stem by observing how the leaves changed colour over time