What Does Your Garden Grow?

For the past three years, my class and I have planted a vegetable garden. I usually apply for a grant. This year, with leftover grant money and a surprise package from Wal-Mart and Burpee, funding was a breeze! After a long weekend, I walked into my classroom to find this box of goodies! 

It came with a ton of seeds, some soil pellets, and planting cups. 

This year, we were a little late starting due to the crazy weather. Every time we thought it was warming up and got ready to plant, another cold front came in. About a month ago, we were finally able to plant! 

This bed has pumpkins, peppers, and green beans. 

(It has gotten too hot, too fast to plant the lettuce we were sent.)

 This bed has tomatoes, sunflowers, and marigolds.

 

The peppers are not looking too good! I do not think they like the hot days and cool nights we have been having. But these little guys were a surprise. Seeds were planted last fall, and they never grew. At the end of last year, we cleaned out the garden, tossed the soil and put down new mulch. The peppers appeared sometime in January. I guess they needed a year to finally sprout!

 I am not sure where the tomato plant came from either. Last year we had a plant, and it could not handle the heat. It died in a matter of days. Then when we suddenly had a pepper plant this year, the tomato plant sprouted a few days later. Not only did we get a huge one in the garden bed, we were surprised to find 2 tomato plants growing about ten feet away, near the parking lot!

I transplanted those guys right into the garden. I never thought they would survive, but they did. Now they are thriving! As of today, there are about 30 tomato blooms on it! 

 The mysterious tomato plant has been providing us with delicious tomatos for over two months now! 

For Mother's Day, we painted cups and planted marigolds for them. 

Can you believe we got another surprise this week? 

I guess when we were planting for Moms, we dropped some seeds. Again, this is by the parking lot! Look at the beautiful marigolds! 

When we began our garden, we created a what we know and our questions chart about plants. 

Instead of providing my students with the answers to their questions, I sent them off to research plants. 

 

We created a can/have/are chart.

Then we went about learning about seeds.

The students experimented with seeds by dissecting them. The goal was to find the coat and the embryo. 

I love her observation! "It was broke!"

They drew and labeled the seed parts. 

Then they made predictions about whether a seed will grow without it's coat.

Each student planted a seed with and a seed without it's coat. (Then they blew away in a storm, but that's another story!) FYI- both will grow. The seed without a coat will grow faster. 

Then we moved into what a plant needs. 

The students are taking care of the garden daily. They are also recording their observations daily, and researching how to keep the plants healthy. You can find my plant activities and observation journal here.

How To Make Ice Cream Writing Common Core

Let me start by saying, I'm not crazy! I know that it is snowing and freezing almost everywhere this week. Thankfully, I planned and taught this lesson last week. Let me remind me you,  I live in Florida. Last week we had beautiful, sunny, hot weather! It was perfect for making ice cream! The idea do to do it on a full moon Monday, well, not so brilliant. =) But we did it...

 We began first thing Monday morning reading this book...

Which is hysterical. They loved it. 

Then we read  this cute ice cream poem...I could not find the author, but if you know who it is, please leave me a comment so I can credit them!

From the poem, I told the students it was time to make ice cream. 

Then we made ice cream, step by step! 

 The students were loving this, of course! They got to mix all their ingredients.

 Here they are just a shakin' away!

 After about 15 minutes, we had ice cream! They were beyond thrilled.

(I, with the mess, not so much. But it was so worth it.) 

 After we ate our ice cream, the kids gathered on the carpet and we charted our ingredients and materials. The students then went off to draw and label the list of ingredients. 

The next day, we reviewed how we made ice cream. I modeled for the students how to draw sequenced pictures of the steps to make ice cream. They illustrated the steps on a graphic organizer. Here is my model. 

These are the students illustrated steps. 

How awesome is this one below!?

The next day, we reviewed transition words and a complete sentence. Here is my model. 

The students then went off to write sentences to match their illustrated steps. 

(Sorry, I forgot to take a picture of this step!)

The following day, we reviewed topic sentences. We brainstormed a list of topic sentences they could use for their writing. (At this time of the year, most of my students can develop their own topic sentence. I have a few ELL students who are still struggling. So I find that it's important to brainstorm several and then they have a choice as to which one to use.) 

Here is my anchor chart with my topic sentence. We also read this great informational book about making ice cream. It had a great topic sentence!

These are the students' organizers for their topic and conclusion sentences. 

The next day, we began our draft. 

I was out sick on Friday, so Monday we reviewed the entire process so far. The students finished their drafts. Later in the day, we went back and reviewed conclusions. 

They added their conclusions. The next day, we edited their drafts and created the matching craftivity. They had two choice for a craftivity. 

These are some final pieces. 

This is what my wall now looks like. It is surrounded by the kids' writing. I am so happy with how this writing project turned out. 

You can find this lesson on TPT by clicking the photo below. 

First three people to comment and leave their email will get a free copy! =)