3rd Day of Science- Science outside

(To the tune of 12 Days of Christmas) On the 3rd Day of Science, my children went outside to learn about botany.....
One of the best places for Hands on Science is right in your own backyard and neighborhood. I have mentioned before that we are studying Botany with Apologia. Recently we talked about the difference between a monocot and a dicot.  Pumpkin Pie and Daddy went on a walk for a date. He was asking her about what they saw on their walk and she began to proclaim which plants were monocots and which were dicots. 

This Azalea is a perfect flower to discuss pollination, flower parts, types of plants, and coloring!

How about the study of plant reproduction and seed dispersal? Pumpkin Pie, Strawberry, and Butterfly love to blow on dandelions and watch the seeds fly through the air.

Gardening is another great Hands on Science activity. Watching seeds sprout, grow, flourish, harvest, and eat is one of the best ways to learn about botany. Here we took some organic potatoes that were sprouting and dropped them in the dirt... a month later we have some potato plants.

Baby Potato plants

We let the kale from last winter go to flower and will watch it complete its life cycle until we have seed pods

Building a flower bed is another exercise in science (and math). In the case of this round planter that Tiger and Daddy (with a little help from Butterfly and Pumpkin Pie) built, they had explore the science of the earth. How did the dirt lay and compact? How could they stabilize the bricks? How about exploring levers, ramps, wheels, etc. Tiger used some levers to help himself lift some of the heavier bricks from their old location.

Circle Flowerbed with flowers sprouting as well as some weeds and garlic