GRADE 3

Automated Watering System

One thing we noticed from our previous plant investigations was that we did not always keep up with watering our plants due to days off of school. To solve this problem, we used an example project with a micro:bit, servo motor, rubber bands, popsicle stick, tape, and straw watering arm to create an automated watering system. The apparatus automatically waters a plant when the soil moisture level is too low, which is measured by keeping track of the conductivity of the soil. (The more water the soil has, the more conductive it is.)  We realized we needed to make setup adjustments with the particular materials we used. This meant we needed to troubleshoot and iterate on our designs.

Rube Golberg Devices That Water a Plant

We began using materials like peg boards, paper towel tubs, marbles, tape, pulleys, wooden downs, cups, toy car ramps, Legos, string, yarn, cotton balls, and cardboard to build Rube Goldberg devices that could knock over a cup of water to water a plant. We brainstormed, tinkered, tested, and iterated with the materials.

We continued to tinker, test, and iterate with Rube Goldberg watering devices.

Plant and Pollinator Models with Robotics

We used WeDo 2.0 LEGO kits to build a model of a pollinator and plant. After we built and coded our base models, we modified the design and the code to make it better represent pollination. Most groups decided they wanted the bee to touch pollen part of the flower and stop. They changed the design of the rotating bee arm, the flower, and/or the code.

3D Printed Planters

We started one of the projects that students had suggested: Creating 3D printed pots for plants. We discussed a number of things we should consider when designing: how to make a hole in a sold shape in Tinkercad, the size of the pot, holes drainage, how we might personalize our designs, and whether we might add holes for strings to hang a pot.

Fruit and Vegetable Battery Investigations

With one class, we wrote plans for our fruit and/or vegetable battery investigations (background research, question, variables, materials, procedure, diagrams of setup) in Google Slides as we prepared to conduct our investigations. We also created diagrams of our experimental setups.

Coding Plant-Themed Animations in Scratch

We a flower animation in Scratch. We used repeat forever, move, and rotate blocks to make flowers spin in creative patterns. We also practiced downloading images from a Google Image search, identifying images we coud use with a Creative Commons license, and editing them in Scratch.

Testing Our Ideas About Plants

Our theme for the year is “plants and pollinators.” We’ll be planning, carrying out, and sharing science, engineering, and history investigations using digital tools. We began by discussing what we think we already know about plants. We also made a list of some initial project ideas we might like to do.

After charting what we thought we knew and what we wanted to do, Mr. Smith asked the class to take what we knew about plants and figure out if harvest corn is a real plant or not for our first project. We noticed and wondered in our investigation journals. Then, we brainstormed investigation ideas like popping it, planting it, and putting it in water. We tried each of these ideas. The harvest corn popped, sprouted in water, and grew in cups of soil!