Botany

The lower elementary students have started their study of botany. Montessori cultural subjects start with lessons meant to strike the student’s’ imagination and give the big picture before going on to look at the specific details. In botany this means we start by presenting the plant kingdom through simple classification charts. 

During the second botany lesson the second and third students examined a small sapling and reviewed its different parts and their functions. They made their own drawings of a tree and wrote the labels for the root system and shoot system and the parts found within these two systems.

The first year students gathered outdoors for a lively discussion about the parts of the plant. They described and named each part while laying labels on the sapling. To illustrate the plant’s need for roots they pretended to be trees with and without roots and acted out what would happen when the wind blew.

All of the students will be spending some time outdoors in the next few days drawing plants and labeling their drawings. The next lessons in botany will take advantage of the change of seasons to focus on the parts of the leaf.

 

Submitted by: Rhonda Reynolds