Knowing our green friends- Plants

Children are learning about the different types of plants!

The topic of the month for PP2 children in February 2013 was “Plants”. For them, it was a very interesting topic in many aspects. The reason for choosing this topic was, for the children to understand the importance of plants and their relationship to how plants aid our everyday environment. When we started the initial topic discussion with a video presentation of a ‘tiny seed’ and later explained to them how each seed ‘has a tiny little plant inside’, they were awestruck.

Plant sprouts out from the seed! 

WOW! Such  big leaves.

To ensure they understood the entire germination process, each child sowed seeds, watered them and exposed them to sunlight every day (for 2 weeks) for a better understanding of how plants make their food (concept of photosynthesis) and grow big. To aid their understanding further, the difficult photosynthesis process was demonstrated to them with the help of a simple kitchen experiment. 

Exploring the shrubs!

Another learning experience for them was that plants are of many types, e.g. trees, herbs, creepers, shrubs, climbers etc. with different physical characteristics. They learnt this by doing a nature walk and actually experimenting through touch and feel. To aid them in learning faster about plants, we organized several hands-on activities, such as art & craft, games, songs, storytelling, picture stories narration, videos presentations etc.

The highlight of all the activities conducted was the vegetable shop. In the play area, we put up a vegetable shop with almost 30 different varieties of vegetables with a price tag on each of them. The children were then given play money for real life experience of vegetable purchases. They were introduced to each and every vegetable with a recap of where each of those vegetables grew. Then they were instructed that they need to buy at least one vegetable from each category like an herb, tree product, underground vegetable etc. The activity further had the children put the ‘purchased’ vegetables in the basket and they had to pay for it. It was an enthralling experience for the children since; each of them experienced the actual ‘purchase’ of the vegetables. This real life ‘simulation’ of vegetable purchase was very engrossing for them, as the children were paired together. One partner was responsible for picking up vegetables by calling out its name loudly and the other partner acknowledging the purchase. Then the second partner was responsible for taking out the play money and paying for the purchased vegetables. This was an absolutely delightful experience for the children as they experienced looking around, calling out the vegetables by name and making the final purchase themselves.

As teachers, the most fulfilling experience for us was to watch the satisfied expressions on the faces of the children after they made the purchase of the vegetables ‘themselves’. They each felt that they had ‘achieved something great in world’ in their little way, by doing ‘real world’ transactions during purchase of the vegetables. The expression on each child’s face itself was perhaps a ‘Kodak moment’. For us, the teachers, these expressions were ‘priceless’. We would love to share with you some of these ‘Kodak Moments’. Trust you will all enjoy seeing these pictures.

-Asha and Rakhi