To start our morning we learned about the different parts of a tree to build knowledge in preparation for the lesson on photosynthesis. We watched the youtube video "Parts of Tree Song". We practiced the song a couple of times.
We made our final tree observation. We took our binoculars out to look at our trees.
In our final observation we observed that our evergreen tree continued to be green and our
deciduous tree had all green leaves again.
To help the students understand about the changes in the leaves as the seasons change, I created little jelly bean shaped chloroplasts. We talked about how the leaves are like the kitchen; the green chloroplast spent all day collecting sunlight and carbon dioxide (CO2) through the leaves and sucking up water and nutrients from the dirt through the roots. The chloroplast then cook all the ingredients together and make sucrose (sugar cubes) that the tree uses for growing. In the fall the green chloroplasts get tired so they rest and the yellow chloroplasts take over (hence the leaves turn yellow). After a little time the yellow chloroplasts get tired, and they let the orange and red chloroplasts take over cooking. The orange and red chloroplast turn the "food" into sucrose (sugar cubes) for the tree to store in the trunk for the winter.
To help solidify the concept, we made oatmeal no bake cookies. The butter was the sun that melted into the leaves, the milk was the water that was sucked up through the roots, the sugar/cocoa mix was the nutrients from the dirt, and peanut butter is the CO2 from people's breath. We cooked the ingredients together just like the chloroplasts. When everything was cooked we added oatmeal to help us remember that it happens in the leaves. Then we spooned the dough onto the cookie sheet to cool.
The students took some of the dress up clothes outside to continue their dramatic play outside.
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