Plant Life Cycle Lesson Plan

Spring is HERE! One of my favorite parts about spring are the new plants that start growing. I love to see how small seeds turn into beautiful flowers or huge trees! To celebrate spring, I created a plant life cycle lesson plan, so that your little gardeners can learn about plants too!

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Seeds: Plant Life Cycle Lesson Plan

Language and Literacy

This adorable book had Evie and I waiting to see what would happen to the little seed on its journey to becoming a flower! It does an amazing job with describing a seed’s journey and the conditions a seed needs to become a plant. It also explain why not all seeds become plants. It was a great book to start our week out!

Math

An important math skill that toddlers and preschool children learn is their shapes. Since Evie is only 18 months, we started with two different shapes. We worked on classification; identifying a heart as opposed to a triangle. This PDF has a couple different shapes, including heart, triangle, square, and circle. I also included some stems just to finish off the ‘flower’ theme!

Science and Sensory

For this experiment, we are creating a mini greenhouse inside a plastic zip bag! This process of sprouting is called germination. Here is how it works:

1. Gather Materials: Paper Towel, zippable plastic bag, dried beans, water
2. Gently soak the paper towel
3. Place the paper towel inside the plastic zip bag
4. Place the bean on top of the paper towel
5. Seal the bag
6. Place in a warm sunny spot and wait!

This process may take up to a week. So I wanted to make sure I included it at the beginning of the week! Your child will love checking on their bean every day to see the progress it is making!

Creative Arts

For this activity, Evie and I created Seed Bombs! I’m sure you have seen the amazing trend that going around! What a great way to start growing, especially if you in an area that is still pretty chilly right now! *Shout out to family and friends in Montana!

They are super simple to make! You only need a couple of things, and this doubles as a great sensory activity to do too! Here is what you need:

• Construction Paper
• Seeds
• Water
• Blender/Food Processor

I saw this awesome post where Justine at the Little Dove Blog created seed bombs using these supplies plus craft sticks and fun shape molds! I feel like older children would really appreciate the different shapes they can make with them!

Here is how you do it:

1. Cut up your paper into small pieces
2. Soak you paper in water ( I highly recommend soaking the paper over night-my blender is not fancy and needs all the help it can get) You are going to be creating a paper pulp!
3. After the paper is soaked, place the paper into the blender and blend until your paper is a pulp or mushy
4. Now press your paper to extract as much excess water as possible
5. Mix your seeds into your mushy paper
6. Roll your paper pulp/seed mixtures into small balls
7. Leave seed bombs in a moist warm place.

Much like the germination project earlier, the seeds need to be moist and warm to start the germination process! You can plant your seed bombs. Paper is biodegradable. Soon you will have little plants for your garden!

Music and Movement

This week I tried something new with Evie! We tried some yoga. This was something that I would do with my 3’s class and it really helped center everyone and create an environment that was calm and ready to learn.

Yoga is also a great way to build muscle strength. Evie is starting to build some core strength that is helping her walk up stair upright, sit up from laying down and lots of other tasks. So for this week’s Yoga we are doing a plant themed yoga session! Evie isn’t old enough to care about the names, so stick around and I promise I’ll get better!

Plant the Seed

This pose or the chair pose is first part of the motion.

Grow the Plant

The next motion represents the growing of the seedling. Doesn’t the leg look like a leaf?

Bloom

This final motion is the flower when the bud opens up!

I know what you are thinking! “Catie, Evie is only 18 months. She’s not doing yoga”. Well she might not be doing these poses exactly. Her ‘plant the seed’ is more of a squat, her ‘grow the plant’ is more one leg balance, and her ‘bloom’ was not really existent, but we are practicing! Someday she may build up the muscles and coordination needed to do these. We are looking for practice not perfection!

Seedling: Plant Life Cycle Lesson Plan

Language and Literacy

For this activity, I reused the flower letters that were featured in the Weather Lesson Plan Focus Board! You can find the letter here to create your own child’s name!

Given the opportunity, I love spelling Evie’s name. We will spell her name and sing a song with her name in it! She loves it singing and dancing!

Math

For this activity, Evie and I took a walk to our community park. On our way back, we picked up leaves, flowers, rocks, sticks and a bunch of other natural items that we found. While I did this mostly for a different purpose, I was a great opportunity to count leaves and petals.

If you are in an area where your foliage is still trying to come in, you can use the flower petals from the shape flower activity! When you laminate the shape petals, you can write on them with permanent marker and clean it off with a dry erase marker!

I use this laminator. After getting my paper stuck in the laminator because it wasn’t perfectly straight, I upgraded to this one. It is wide enough to laminate up to A3 paper so I never get my papers stuck anymore!

Science and Sensory

This activity was a great way to include fine motor skills into the activity. We have had a Skip Hop activity table since Evie was a baby. It grows with your child. We started with a spinning set in the center and toys along the edge. The bottom foot tray (if that’s what you call it) comes off and pops into place to make a table! I left the top table part off, and put a piece of cardboard over the hole. I used green craft sticks to simulate plants. Evie was able to push them through and pull them up to pretend to grow plants! She did some great pinching for this activity!

Creative Arts

I called this activity ‘stamping flower’ and friends, it was SO EASY. I saved a couple of toilet paper tubes and a paper towel tube. I cut the paper towel tube into three smaller pieces. Afterwards I cut the down the tubes about an inch. I folded them to open them up and shaped the ‘petals’ to look like flowers. Evie loved doing this activity! The tubes fit perfectly in her hands and she loved using different flowers and colors to make her paper!

Music and Movement

For this activity, Evie and I danced and practiced copying different movements to the song “Grow, Grow, Grow“. So, this song doesn’t have someone doing the actions with you but they are super easy to make up on your own!

For “I’m a little seed” we would crouch down

For “Grow, Grow, Grow” we would reach for the sky, getting higher and higher.

We added in spinning, stomping, clapping and waving our arms to represent the actions that the flower was doing in the song as well!

I love doing action songs with Evie. Not only does it help her with following directions, but it also gives her an opportunity to practice some of her gross motor skills!

Adult Plants: Plant Life Cycle Lesson Plan

Language and Literacy

I love to extend our learning environment outside, as much as possible. So if I can take a book outside and read it in our yard, we do! This book, Mrs. Peanuckle’s Flower Alphabet is great! We can take the book outside with us and use it to try to identify any flowers outside!

Math

For this activity, the only thing you need is a ruler or tape measure! This activity is a great activity for number recognition. Take the measuring tape or ruler, and head outside. Measure the plant and compare the heights of the plants near you!

Evie and I went outside and tried to measure the plants…she was a little more interested in picking flowers. So we modified this activity just a little bit. We collected some flowers, and talked about different comparisons. The one we used most commonly was taller or shorter. We also used more petals and less petals when we talked about the flowers.

Science and Sensory

Today, I want to encourage you to go outside! Observe the environment. Look for animals. Look for interesting plants!

I headed to my local hardware store, and picked up a couple of paint samples. We used the samples like looking glasses! We used them to match colors on our nature walk. Unfortunately, everything is still in the process of waking up an blooming so we didn’t get to see all the vibrate colors. I’ll have to post an update once everything wake up again. Check out this awesome idea here at Fantastic, Fun and Learning!

Today we headed to our local park! This park has untouched, natural land with a walking path. Evie loved it! Of course the only colors we found were green, brown and white! She didn’t seem to mind though!

If a nature walk is not in the forecast, check out this magnetic flowers activity! Your child can ‘grow’ their own flowers if they aren’t growing in nature quite yet!

Creative Arts

For our creative project for the day, Evie and I made some clay! I wanted to create some clay impressions for her fairy garden that we are starting to make.

Making the clay was super easy and you only needed three ingredients.

• 1 cup of baking soda
• 1/2 cup of cornstarch
• 3/4 cup of water

After your clay is made, and you make all of the impressions you like, you can bake them in the oven (200 degrees Fahrenheit) for an hour to an hour and a half. Feel free to paint your impression afterwards!

Music and Movement

For this activity, Evie and I danced using our instruments to the song ” How Does A Plant Grow”. She does really well with her instruments. She loves trying each one. She will start with the egg shaker, move on to the tambourine and then the drumsticks!

Pollination: Plant Life Cycle Lesson Plan

Language and Literacy

One of my favorite pollinators is the bee! Well that just means that we are going to be introducing Evie to the letter B!

I created a letter B wall so that Evie can become more familiar with the letter and the sound. As she continues to learn new words (which I attribute all to our increased use of story sticks), Evie prefers “B” words. Belly, Ball, Book, Banana are all some of the words she has learned in the past couple of weeks. For our “B” wall, I included pictures of some of these things and a couple new pictures so that she can learn some new words as well as practice some of her more common ones!

I simply cut out the images, laminated them, stuck a velcro dot on the back, and put them up on the felt board I made for her! She loves her felt board! She will take things off and put things back on. The Flower puzzle (coming up soon) is one of her favorite things to do on this board!

Math

During this activity in our plant life cycle lesson plan, I introduced patterns for her. Now, Evie is not creating patterns yet. That doesn’t mean your child won’t! I created a flower cutting, pasting pattern sheet that I would do with my 3’s class weekly. For every problem, there is only one answer. They loved them!

I also included some extra flowers on the second and third pages so that you can practice making your own patterns!

Science and Sensory

This pollination project was probably may be favorite activity. We created some coffee filter flowers (just to hold chalk), and put chalk shavings into the middle.

Afterwards, I placed them in front of Evie. Helped her stick her hand in the flower to collect ‘pollen’, then we transferred the pollen to different flowers! My goal was to show Evie how pollination works. To do this, I have different colored chalk, that she would slap the chalk onto the flowers. This showed how the pollen transfers from one flower to another!

I made a couple of different flowers on black paper (to show the chalk better) with white pens. I knew Evie would want to keep slapping the paper for a while and I was right! She LOVED them!

Creative Arts

For our activity, Evie and I used extra Easter eggs and rocks to paint some bees! When you are on your nature walks grab some rocks. For my friends who are still buried under lots of snow, I got you! These rocks come in a couple different sizes and are flat. They are perfect for painting! I like to use these paint pens when I want to get better details! I plan to put these in Evie’s Fairy Garden so, I wanted to make sure that I didn’t use super messy paint, and that the paint would stick around after it rained a couple of times.

We had a couple of toilet paper tubes laying around so we made a couple more alternative bees and butterflies!

Using a toilet paper tube, I painted a bee with yellow and black paint. I used pipe cleaners for the wings and the antennas.

I use made a butterfly using a toilet paper tube that I cut into small strips. I bend the tube to make the body and wing shapes. Then I used cellophane to create an awesome color reflection when it is ‘flying’ in the air!

Music and Movement

We can’t not do the waggle dance! Did you know that bees dance to communicate? How COOL! Check out more fun facts here!

Seed Dispersal: Plant Life Cycle Lesson Plan

Language and Literacy

I recently found this book and I LOVE it! Little Dandelion Seeds the World, not only talks about the process of seed dispersal and the life cycle of a plant, but it also discusses how the seed can travel and a dandelion can be found all across the world!

Math

This puzzle is one that I designed. It is a simple image that is divided into 5 sections. Each section is numbered so that your child can practice counting, and number recognition. It is completely free to download if you would like it!

Science and Sensory

One way that seeds travel is via animals! Seeds can get stuck on fur or seeds can get eaten. For this activity. We look at seed dispersal from the point of view of the seed that gets stuck on fur. Using cotton balls and pipe cleaners, Evie and I took our animal, played with it outside, and observed what we found after playing.

We found that natural materials would cling to the cotton balls (much like wool or fur). After a while, seeds would fall off, or Evie would brush them off. The seeds may not have moved but they travelled to a new location. By traveling, it increased the odds that a plant would grow in a new location!

Creative Arts

During our many nature walks, Evie and I collect natural materials. Today we used those materials to create a nature item collage! The only supplies that you need are nature items (sticks, leaves, flowers, dirt, etc.), paper and glue! It was so simple and Evie loved gluing everything down! What kind of images did your child make?

I love doing this activity because I can express how plant materials all started as a seed. As it grows, it changes and becomes a bigger plant. Then that bigger plant can create seeds and make more plants! How wonderful is that!

Music and Movement

For our last music and movement activity for this plant life cycle lesson plan, I wanted to look at a very important part of some plants. The fruit!

Fruit contains seeds. When the animals eat the seeds they participate in seed dispersal! Do you like fruit? Evie and I love fruit too! This song is called Fruit Juice and it has a wonderful beat to it! I know it will make your child get up and dance just like mine did!

Bonus Activities

• WWF Teaching Tools about Monarchs – this website has some great activities the toolkit is free but it will ask you for your name and email to receive the toolkit.
• Science Kids – Plants for Kids this site contains games, videos, facts and science experiments all involving plants!

Additional Resources

• PBS Learning Media – From Seed to Fruit
• Insteading – Gardening Resources for Kids
• Here is a farm felt board! I used it during a farm lesson plan, and it fit so nicely with this one I brought it back out!

Final Thoughts

Overall, I had so much fun doing this activity with Evie. I loved how it took my daughter and myself outside into nature. There is so much we can learn by exploring the world around us. Remember, outside is an extension of the inside learning environment!

What did you think of these activities? Did you have a favorite? Does your child have a favorite? I would love to see pictures or hear your stories about your learning journey! Thank you all taking the time to read my blog! Feel free to comment below!