Studying Fruit Ripening: A High School Biology Homeschool Lesson

See more simple science experiments at Simple Science Strategies

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Kitchen Science!

Are you studying plant biology with your high school homeschooler?

Check out this easy-to-do experiment on plant growth regulators (hormones) that you can do right on your kitchen counter.

Bonus: You get to eat the experiment when you're through!



{This post was included in Teach Me Tuesday #24 Linky Party!}

Post by A Child's Garden.

The Nightshade Family (and a Little Surprise)

We had begun this plant family study when Barbara introduced the September Challenge on Weeds, Seeds and Other Delights. What timing!

We are having such a successful time studying birds family by family, that we decided to do the same with plants. And we have so many "cousins" in this family, right in our vegetable garden: tomato, potato, pepper, eggplant, the rogue tomatillo from years gone by. Also our little petunia basket.

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The Nightshade family (Solanaceae)

Our garden has quite a few members of the nightshade family. It is a nice family to study for nature study, as it originated here in the Western Hemisphere (although its ancestors didn't resemble most of our common garden varieties now).

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Read-Alouds:
 
I have this thing about books about gardening. I usually go through periods of bringing home armloads from the library, followed by more restrained times where I bring home some chapter books. All through the summer, we read a great number of books about vegetable and flower gardening. Here are some favorites (from this summer and previous years):

In Enzo's Splendid Garden, by Patricia Polacco (anything by Patricia Polacco is terrific)
The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett (good connection to history)
Miss Rumphius, by Barbara Cooney (so many Maine connections for us)
The Giving Tree, by Shel Silverstein (this book always made my boys cry...)

There are so many... You can get so much mileage out of the ones above, because the characters are so delightful. Lots of life lessons.

We also took the time this summer to study Genesis 1 and 2, to learn about the Garden of Eden, when we began our series of read-alouds about gardens.

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Notebooking:

We started our notebooking with a colored sketch of our common nightshade, which tumbles along our back fence behind the wildflower garden. We had fun sketching together. I found that my son did a nicer job with his detail when I sketched along with him. And I enjoyed myself too -- how often do we stop to spend that time with one another, just BEING?


 We noticed as we sketched that we had a hitchhiker, who we will talk about later...

We found a diagram of a potato plant  that we studied and colored. We wanted one that was more like a diagram, and not cartoony.


We used a number of blank notebooking pages from the Notebooking Treasury, because we did a lot of sketching of the nightshade plants and other "cousins".


Here are some other places for notebooking pages on these plants:


The Outdoor Hour Challenge Crop Plant Challenges Notebook Pages include pages for a number of common vegetable garden plants, including tomato. Here is a link to a sample.


Homeschool Notebooking has free pages for download, on many topics.


Enchanted Learning has so many pages, diagrams, mini-books and activities, that you are bound to find something to include in your notebook. My little guy doesn't always like to sketch, but he enjoys diagrams, so this is a good place to go for things to add to your drawings.

 

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Background Information:

The Handbook of Nature Study has several pages (pp. 582-584) about the petunia, the flowery cousin to the common nightshade and its vegetable friends. Petunias are nice to use to study the flower structure of the nightshade family, as the flower parts are big.

Here is a case where there isn't a lot that can substitute for just going out and working in the garden. Even in the years when the garden doesn't do well, we always learn something new and get a refreshed spirit from working with seeds and soil.

If you didn't have a vegetable garden this year, think of putting even a container garden in next year.
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Lesson Ideas and Links:

1. Grow a Vegetable Garden

We spent a lot of time gardening while we studied this plant family. We learned about how common nightshade is poisonous, while the other cousins in our garden are not. As we gardened, we compared the flowers, and talked about how botanists use the flowers to identify a plant.

We have about a zillion cherry tomatoes, and they are so much better than the store ones! Two of our four kids don't like tomatoes, but the other two love them. We also have plum tomatoes, some big, meaty, pink-fleshed ones, and, of course, Brandywines. We picked a bunch before Hurricane Irene, just in case, but the plants did well, even thought the heirlooms have climbed far out of their cages. 
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We had started digging potatoes just before the hurricane, and I'm sure that we have a ton of them -- if it can just stop raining! Our soil was already quite wet before Irene, and I think we've only had 2 or 3 days without rain since she passed through our way. I just walked the dog, and the ground sounds like a sponge. At any rate, the first potatoes were delicious for breakfast,  so we're looking forward to the rest.


Malik planted some potatoes in his little garden, too. He found digging potatoes to be fun but tiring.
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I planted the cutest little eggplants this year. I am the only one who likes eggplant in the house, but I think the flowers are beautiful. Don't you? Like our nightshade flowers, on vitamins.

The ones I planted have little fruit (about 3" long), which are purple and white striped. We had to fight the squirrels for the fruit this year. Last year, they would wait until the fruit were just beginning to look like eggplants, then they would strip the branches off! GRRRR!

This year, they started, but our cats spent their first summer outside since they were born, and I think that discouraged the squirrels enough to let the eggplants have a fighting chance. I think we are doing well!

I am amazed at how resilient eggplants are. We have had one of the wackiest summers that I can remember -- about two weeks of near 100 degree, humid weather, followed by a cold spell, followed by tropical, followed by hurricane... And they keep coming!

We have not seen any potato beetles on any of our nightshade family plants this year. Last year there were a few on the eggplants, but I picked them off by hand once, and that did the trick. A few holes on the potatoes, but that's it.

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Our hot peppers were not nearly as resilient as the eggplants, potatoes and tomatoes. It's always tricky, timing the planting. Peppers don't like being cold. And it seems like they never really recover from being set out when the soil is too cold. My plants are small. The peppers are tasty, but there could be more of them. Next year, we'll wait, then we'll plant more.

If you want a great hot pepper for your garden, grow Hot Lemon Peppers. They are pretty, bright lemon yellow, and produce a ton of peppers that are about 3 inches long. I'm not sure why, but no vendors had them available this year. It must have been a bad seed year last year. At any rate, if you are seed catalog shopping this winter, and see them for sale, buy them (we usually buy plants). You'll be pleased.

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If you want to do a nice botany study, the nightshade family makes a nice choice, since there are so many members that you can find at your local garden center. Plus, you get to eat the results of your study!  In these two photos, you can see how the shape of the potato leaves is very similar to the shape of the common nightshade leaves, below. But the habit of the nightshade (almost vine-like) is more like the old-fashioned tomatoes that we have in the garden.

For older children, slicing the fruits lengthwise (stem end to flower end) and sketching the arrangement of the seeds would be a very beneficial botanical study. You will need a hand lens to compare the fruit of the common nightshade. Did you know that all the fruits are berries?



I wanted to find the strange nightshade weed cousin, Jimson-weed, to add to our studies, but have not found any in the vacant lots on our walks. I will have to check by the railroad tracks. When I've found Jimson-weed before, it was in a grassy, overgrown second growth meadow.  The fruits of Jimson-weed are prickly. Jimson-weed, like nightshade, is poisonous.









When I was a little girl, we called the bright red fruits of nightshade "poison berries." I read in one source that 200 of these would be enough to kill a grown man.
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2. Make a Plant Press

Before the hurricane, we built a simple plant press, following the directions in Barbara McCoy's blog post, "How to Make a Plant Press."  We will continue with our plant press project after things dry out a little bit!

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3. Learn Some Scientific Names

My son enjoys the scientific names for the plants and animals we study. For more information on Latin binomials and binomial nomenclature, see my article, "Animal, Vegetable or Mineral? Scientific Names and the Natural World."

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4. Practice Penmanship

When we first started homeschooling last fall, we struggled with our little guy's handwriting. He had learned so many bad handwriting habits, and it took a lot of practice (and holding the bar high) to get things back in shape. Charlotte Mason would say of copywork and penmanship, "Accept only excellence."

We use our vocabulary sometimes as a source for copywork. This is what we did with our nightshade family plant names.

Because Malik is in third grade, we practice manuscript several times a week, but we also work on cursive.

As a teacher, I always introduced the letters in the order of ease of creating them: the "loop" letters first -- e, l; then the closed loop letters -- i, t, u, w (a little trickier).  We only write words that we have studied the letters of, or we practice joinings, only.  The photo below shows some cursive practice of joinings.

Periodically, I have my son "grade" himself on slant, size and shape of his letters. We also put a smiley or star next to our favorite word or joining on the page.

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5. Bug Study

We discovered an interesting, as yet unidentified, insect who hitched a ride on the nightshade we sketched. Malik named him, "Buggy." It looks like a shield bug, but it eats holes in the leaves, and most true bugs are sap drinkers.

Buggy is very happy in a plastic container with a fresh supply of nightshade leaves regularly provided.  We will keep trying to identify him (unless one of you can!). It doesn't seem to like the other nightshade family plants nearly as much as he likes common nightshade.

Fall is a great time to do a bug study. Friday, we will be posting about the incredible crop of anthills that have sprung up in our driveway this summer.



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For classroom teachers looking for integrated studies centering on nature study, download my September newsletter, "The Little Green Corner," posted today.

Dandelions: A Bilingual Lesson on Plant Anatomy and Life Cycles

I have a spot in the back of my yard that I call my "wildflower nursery." I am forever picking up packets of wildflower seeds on sale, or buying packets of ones that I enjoy and want more of, or sowing those free samples that come in the mail when they want you to buy a "Topsy Turvy" or a rototiller. I even spend time transplanting wildflowers from the edge of vacant lots into my garden. Yes, I transplant "weeds."  The baby wildflowers grow up, and I then rearrange them or transplant them in groups to other spots in my flower beds.

Now, I know what I've planted there (sometimes...), what is desirable, what will be gradually culled out (the crop of fleabane needs to be thinned so it doesn't take over) or pulled out immediately (bittersweet and poison ivy). But my husband's untrained eye sometimes sees "weeds" and disorder, and we have a misunderstanding. The weedwhacker is not forgiving.  I have gone out more than once, garden tools in hand, to check on my "babies," to find them leveled. Fortunately, I have sown so much seed, that there are new ones soon. AND I put down mulch in the area, so my husband can see that it is not just weeds. Gotta keep loving him (but I might hide the string trimmer...).

Some people wage war against dandelions the way people wage war against a mouse in the kitchen. I find them cheerful and a welcome addition to the yard (along with the Queen Anne's lace from last month).

We read through Spring Nature Study: Dandelions in the Handbook of Nature Study, and the accompanying pages in the Handbook. We had no problem finding dandelions at various stages, and we made life cycle cards, showing a dandelion in leaf, one with a yellow flower, one with a seed head, and a close up of the seeds. Then we did something different, and followed up our observations with a Spanish lesson on the parts of plants.

Step 1: First, we reviewed the parts of plants in English. We used materials from Enchanted Learning to record our learning. (If you don't have a subscription, do get one -- there is a ton of stuff that you can use to add to your nature study notebook).

Step 2: Next, we reviewed plant life cycles, which we had studied earlier in the year. This time, we applied what we had learned to the dandelion, the subject of our nature study. (The notebooking page, at left, is from The Notebooking Treasury; the mini-book on life cycles is from Enchanted Learning. We stapled an envelope to a notebooking page and slipped the mini-book in, to create a "3D" notebook page).

Step 3: Then we had to learn our Spanish plant parts vocabulary. We did this in a variety of ways.

1. For daily copywork, we used Spanish vocabulary words and simple sentences.

2. We made two-sided (English/Spanish) vocabulary cards that we used in a vocabulary game, called "Firecracker" (directions are below).

3. We also made sure that we practiced saying the words whenever we used them -- even more important than writing them!

Step 4:  We wrote simple sentences about plants using "high-frequency" sentences starters (Yo veo ["I see"], Que ves ["What do you see?"]) and our vocabulary. In the example to the right, we were practicing making plural nouns by adding -s to Spanish words that end in "a". Plant nature study also was a great opportunity to have word study lessons on feminine and masculine nouns, color words, and making plurals by adding -es.

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Firecracker: A Word Study Game

When I was a resource room teacher, I learned a game that I have used for spelling, vocabulary and literacy learning centers, ever since. It is called Firecracker, and all you need to make your own game is an empty Pringles container and some small notecards or plastic plant tags.

1. Prepare a container for your game. An old Pringles can works great, is free, and looks like a firecracker. Wipe out the inside of the container with a paper towel to remove crumbs and any residual grease. Cover the outside of the container with a sheet of construction paper and label your game (NOTE: A sheet of 8-1/2 x 11 paper wraps neatly around the container without too much trimming). I label the game "Firecracker," then add whatever the focus is, for easy identification later.

2. Select the material for your word study cards. For vocabulary cards, I use pre-scored business cards (the kind that you run through your printer) -- they're pretty, and just the right size. Of course, you can cut your own -- not a bad option if you have a paper cutter. Cards work best if they are on card stock, and not paper. You could get fancy and laminate them, but I never did -- it was an unnecessary step, I thought. Use marker and bold color to write on the cards.

If you are making a spelling game, I would suggest using plastic garden plant labels. You will want to put a lot of words with the same spelling focus in the can, and plastic tags work perfectly. Plus, they are sturdy, and appeal to the tactile learner. Use a Sharpie to write on the tags.

3. Choose your words, and create the cards/tags for your focus. Write in marker, so it's easy to see quickly. If you'd like to highlight the spelling rule or word study focus, write that part of the word in a contrasting color (e.g., for long vowel patterns with the "a" sound, write the part of the word that makes the "a" sound in a bright color (not red -- we'll need that for the next step!), and the rest of the word in black). You can even have the kids create the game cards as part of their copywork. In the photo above (an animal taxonomy game), you can see that I also included picture cards that came in my son's National Geographic for Kids magazine -- include some pictures when working with younger children or more challenging activities. Try to have at least 30 word cards, to make the game the most fun.

4.  Make 2-3  "firecrackers" to put in the can. Make these the same way you make the word cards, except write "FIRECRACKER!" in red marker.

5. Play the Game! This game works best for 2-4 players. Players take turns drawing one card or tag from the can (no peeking!). After viewing the word, the player must cover the word and spell it out loud (or, in the case of our vocabulary, read the English word, then produce the Spanish word, which is written on the back, or vice versa). If the player is correct, he gets to keep the card. Play continues counterclockwise. The player with the most correct when all the cards are read, wins.

Here's the fun part: if a player draws one of the "firecrackers," everyone shouts "Firecracker!" and the player who drew the "firecracker" must return all his cards to the can (kind of like having to go back to start in Candyland...).

Start saving your Pringles cans -- make a new game for each word study you have!

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I know that we are doing some math review this summer -- perhaps you are, too. For ideas on how to use real-life opportunities, such as grocery shopping, gardening, or Bible study, to reinforce important math skills and concepts, see my revised article, Living Math: Beyond Math Facts.

Have a terrific week! Play outside!

Queen Anne's Lace and Other Pretty Things

It seems like we went from winter to summer in the blink of an eye. We have had a stretch of weather with high, high humidity and temperatures in the high 80's for about a week, and have found ourselves in 90+ degree weather for the holiday weekend. But gardening still calls!

I came upon some free vegetable plants. I mean lots of them. My husband saw them all and inquired, "Where ARE you gonna put all those?" To which I replied, "Everywhere." And we started today!

I always have loved the gardens where roses mingled with some pole beans, and nasturtiums rambled between pepper plants. So I plopped some tomatoes in between the knock-out roses (you know, the ones my son and I sat in a few weeks ago), and found some "extra" space in front of the rose bed that became part of the flower bed "accidentally." Here's how you  do that:

 Yes, I simply moved the brick border out and filled in the gap with soil and woodchips. My husband didn't notice the first time I did it, but he caught me this time and accused me of taking over the whole yard. I said, "But look how pretty the garden is," and he concurred. You can follow along with our gardening adventures by checking our online family journal, The Urban Farmer.

I bought a couple of yellow trumpet creepers and planted them along a trellis where I currently hang my bird feeders. It's really a bad place for them, traffic wise -- I hit my head exactly three times on them while I worked in the yard today. Malik thought that was funny, and I guess it really was, by the third time. But it's the best place to hang it for viewing from the back of the house. So I practice ducking. Except today.

Part of one flower bed has become invaded by Queen Anne's Lace. I let it grow there, because I just love them, and they remind me of the banks of them growing along the rail bed near my home, growing up. So I let them tumble into the lawn, and my husband weed whacks around them. When they get too unruly, I root some out. But I don't get too hung up on them growing in the garden.

We began the Queen Anne's Lace Year-long study last week, fighting an incredible batch of mosquitoes until we were forced to take a sample in to study inside (it makes a pretty centerpiece, too).  Here are our sketches.

Malik was particularly fascinated by the arrangement of the leaves and leaflets of the plant, since we are studying fractals (repeating patterns in nature -- see my new article on Fractals in Nature for more information and photos). He noticed that the leaflets looked like little versions of the whole leaf, so they must be fractals, and said, "See, I really AM learning stuff in homeschool!"

As the school year winds down, check out these updates to two of my previous articles:

"Engaging Books for Boys" is a list of book series that covers boys from grades K through 6, with links to other books that will keep boys reading all summer. Check this out in my Literacy 101 article.

I also added some additional activities and links to the "Sandy Beach" excursion in my Road Trip! 2010-2011 article -- Aloha!

Remember: We live in the land of the free BECAUSE of the brave. Have a safe Memorial Day weekend.