How do Plants Grow?

I am doing a Montessori Early Years Teaching Qualification and my latest assignment requires that I write a planning web for a topic before choosing one of the 'cultural activities' and doing it with the children.  As it is currently a 'hot topic' with the children here, I decided to plan for 'How do Plants Grow?'I thought of lots of things to extend children's knowledge about plants and their growth and decided to share them here as I'd like to do lots of them and post about them and then you will all know what I am talking about!  I have combined Montessori curriculum headings with EYFS to suit all interested parties!!

Literacy (Communication, Language and Literacy)

• Booklets or spinning books (i-dials) on the life cycles of seeds.
• Sequencing cards on stages of growth.
• Books and stories
• Language tray with initial sounds that relate to seeds and plants (b-bean, p-pot, c-compost, s-sun, w-water, g-grow, l-leaf)
• Word wall - new vocabulary relating

Mathematics (Problem Solving, Reasoning and Numeracy)

• Measuring the plants as they grow.
• Ordering seeds and beans from largest to smallest.
• Making bird cake from seeds - following a recipe card.
• Volumes of compost in pots.
• Measuring rainfall.

Creative (Creative Development)

• Make bean collages.
• Sunflowers - Van Goch painting, pallet of colours mixed to match and paint sunflowers.
• Natural paints using mud, dandelions, other flowers, leaves.
• Maracas with dried beans/rainmakers.
• Music and Movement - growing as plants grow.
• Songs and poems about growing.

Activities of daily living (Physical Development - fine motor)

• Sorting beans.
• Transferring with tweezers or tongs.
• Spooning beans/seeds.
• Pouring dried beans and seeds.
• Matching seed packets to seeds.

Cultural (Knowledge and Understanding of the World)

• Cooking and tasting recipes from around the world that use beans.
• Biology - set up a wormery and put leftovers from the children's fruit into it.
• Botany - parts of a plant/ what parts of a plant do we eat?/ life cycle of a bean
• Science - what plants need to grow/ celery stalks and food colouring/ dark box for plant to grow to the light.
• Leaf shapes/types.

Sensorial (CD, PSRN)

• Paint colour swatches in green to match to leaves of plants as they grow.
• Matching herbs by their smell.
• Leaf skeletons in the nature basket.
• Matching shapes to plant related items - cone (pot) seed(ovoid) etc.

Although Montessori curricula don't specifically have a section for Personal, Social and Emotional Development, by the approach that Montessori setting take, PSED is supported through all other activities, so you can look for aspects of this as the children take part in activities, just as you would normally.  I'm hoping to post about these activities as we go along, and will link them back to this plan as I go to make it easier to find them.  I'm anticipating that we will spend all summer investigating the way things grow though, so don't be disappointed if it isn't all here in the next couple of weeks.... if you want more information about any of these activities now, please leave a comment and ask and i will do my best to help you out!

Telling the Time

I picked up this clock box in a second hand sale for a pound a few months ago but it has been irritating me a little as it never really 'fitted' anywhere..... too big for the bookcase and too enticing for the littlest ones to take them in and out and carry them round.... all very well but I have books for them to do that with if they wish and I wanted these to be used to explore the passing of time!!  So I re-purposed them into an activity box that can be used independently or with support from an adult.  This is what I added to the box:

• Blank clock faces printed and laminated with a whiteboard pen to draw in the hands.
• A larger clock with moving hands - make your own from here!
• Quarter past and quarter to cards from here (fourth down in the right hand column)
• Half past cards from the same site (fourth down in the left hand column!)
• Days of the week sequencing cards based on The Very Hungry Caterpillar story - these help children to put them in order by themselves as the number of fruits the caterpillar eats through increases as the days go on..... they also encourage children to expand into literacy!
• I made this simple activity to introduce the months.
• Ordinal numbers showing 1st to the 31st.
• The Seasons of a tree.
• I have also made a card for each child with their photograph and birthday on it.
• These resources from twinkl also look great
• I'd like to add one or two of these large sand timers when I can.