Trees

Over the past few months, the science theme in school had been on plants (subtopics: flowers, trees etc).
Today in e-science class, they learnt about stems and trunks. He found it interesting when the picture showed a white flower turned red after being placed in a red liquid (to demonstrate how stems transport water). Generally, he’s quite interested when I get the chance to explain stuff about nature. It’s unfortunate that I can’t do it more often.

Coming home from therapy today, I had a few minutes to spare before having to cook dinner. My original intention was just to show him that we too had a banana tree in front of our house, and a papaya tree at the back (his BM workbook today had a similar picture).

It quickly instead turned into an opportunity to teach science. It’s one thing to learn it via pictures in a workbook or images projected on a wall. But I think it’s far more interesting (and he’s more likely to remember) if shown the real thing.

I had to keep it simple due to time constrain. So I just showed him words they used like trunk, bark, stem, stalk, leaf, vein, blade, waxy surface, long broad leaf, thin small leaf, flower, pollination, fruit, pollen, nectar (2 butterflies and a bee were there) and took a few photos.

He enjoyed it. For e.g. he ran to another part of the garden to point out how different the leaves were on a plant there.

Actually a few weeks ago I thought of a craft activity that mirrors what was taught. But there are a few more pieces needed. Will write about it when I finally get it together.