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COURSE

Plants

Plants will introduce your child to these concepts and more:

  • The Plant Life Cycle
  • Plant Anatomy
  • Photosynthesis
  • Soil Characteristics
  • Plant Environments
  • Plants & Agriculture
  • Plants, Animals & People

COURSE OVERVIEW

Create a garden of learning as you teach your child about the wonderful world of plants! With books, puzzles, demonstrations, outdoor exploration, and hands-on planting projects built in, this course is designed to nurture your child’s love of nature and give them a deeper understanding of the importance of plants in our world.

After completing this course’s 15 lessons, your child will have new knowledge about the parts of plants, different types of plants, and what they need to survive.

Lesson 1: What Do Plants Need?

In this lesson, your child will learn that all green plants use the energy of light, water, and a gas called carbon dioxide to make their own food. They’ll also discover that this process is called photosynthesis and that essential nutrients are needed for it to happen—that’s food for thought!

Lesson 2: Plants Need Water

Help your child drink up knowledge as you teach them about plants and water. They’ll discover that it’s the amount of water in a particular environment that helps determine the kinds of plants that can grow there. They’ll also do a demonstration to observe what happens if a plant doesn’t get the correct amount of water.

Lesson 3: Plants Need Light

Your child will be a lean, green, learning machine as they explore why plants need light to survive. They’ll learn how the temperature affects plants and they’ll discover that to use the energy of sunlight to make food from carbon dioxide and water, plants need a chemical called chlorophyll.  

Lesson 4: Plant Parts

Like us, plants are made up of parts that help them survive and thrive. In this lesson, your child will learn that vascular plants transport water and have four parts: the leaf, stem, roots, and flower. They’ll also discover that leaves collect carbon dioxide from the air!

Lesson 5: Plant Parts: Leaves

“Leaf” nothing out as you teach your child about the important role that leaves play! They’ll learn that leaves use light, air, water, and nutrients to make food and that veins carry water and food to support a plant. They’ll also observe that leaves vary in shape, size, color, and texture.

Lesson 6: Plant Parts: Roots and Stems

Your child’s plant knowledge will continue to grow as you teach them about roots and stems! They’ll discover that vascular plants include herbaceous plants that have softer stems and shrubs and trees that have woody stems. 

Lesson 7: Plant Parts: Flowers

In this lesson, your blossoming botanist will explore the parts of a flower and their functions. Your child will learn that a flower is the reproductive part of a plant, and through dissecting a flower, they’ll discover that the main parts are the stem, sepal, petals, pistil, and stamen.

Lesson 8: Flowers Make Seeds

Help your child’s knowledge spread as they explore how flowers make seeds and fruit! In this lesson, they’ll learn that the pistil and the stamen are the parts in the center of a flower that help it make seeds, and they’ll get to cut fruits and vegetables open to find their seeds! 

Lesson 9: Seeds to Plants

Seed your child’s knowledge as you help them learn more about how plants grow! Through planting a seed and documenting their steps, they’ll explore how seeds are used to reproduce a plant and they’ll get to see how a sprout is the part of a plant that grows out of the seed!

Lesson 10: Spreading Seeds

Your child’s learning will take flight in exciting new directions as they delve into how seeds spread! They’ll discover that dispersal is when a seed is transported from a plant to a place where it can grow, and they’ll get to create a “seed” and experiment with how far it can travel. 

Lesson 11: Plant Types

In this lesson, your child will learn that all plants belong to one of two main groups: vascular plants like trees, shrubs, food plants, cacti, grasses, and ferns, or other plants like mosses, liverwort, and hornworts that don’t have true roots, stems, and leaves. They’ll also explore how shrubs are plants with woody branches.

Lesson 12: Trees

Sit under the learning tree with your child as you help them discover that there are more than 80,000 tree species, including birches, firs, maples, palms, and pines! They’ll also discover that a conifer is a tree that produces cones to hold its seeds and that a deciduous tree’s leaves fall off in winter and regrow in the spring.

Lesson 13: Unusual Plants

Plants are everywhere, and some of them thrive in extraordinary places! In this fun lesson, your child will learn that an adaptation is a feature or behavior of a plant or animal that helps it survive in its environment and that some plants can even eat animals! They’ll also discover that certain plants mimic insects to help them spread their pollen.

Lesson 14: Plants and People

Shepherds have been guarding their flocks for thousands of years, and you can help your child understand why in this lesson about sheep and agriculture. Your child will learn about rams, ewes, and lambs, fleece and its uses, and how and when sheep are carefully sheared for wool.

Lesson 15: Plants Review

With so much knowledge planted, it’s time for your child to pick a topic of their choice and design a presentation to share their growth! Whether it’s on plant types, photosynthesis, or understanding adaptations, your child can choose a unique way to share what they’ve learned with your family.

Thumbnail of Plants lesson plan
Sample Lesson Plan