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From Planting to Helping Friends


 
We began the week by planting some scarlet runner beans and bush beans in a clear plastic cup with paper towel so we would be able to see the bean sprouting process over the next few classes.  


 
After the children had a chance to plant the beans and place them on the window sill, they were waiting for it to sprout and found it challenging to understand now that the bean is in sunlight and it has water why is it not sprouting? Lots of great questions and discussions had the children thinking.

I decided to read the children a story about The Enormous Potato by Aubrey Davis while they still stood by the window waiting for the beans to sprout!! The story is about a farmer who plants a “potato eye” and it begins to grow and now he needs the help of his family to pull the potato out of the ground.





We decided that after planting our bean, imagine the bean grew as big as the potato and we now needed the help of others to pick these beans, so the children had an idea that we could all pull the bean.
 





Each child would name a friend that could come up and help with the bean that had grown “enormous”. We began the day talking about planting and ended with helping friends.

The children demonstrated "Emergent Curriculum", which allows us to be responsive to their interests and give them a meaningful learning experience, during these activities of planting and reading a story.

Until next time.

Jess

 


 

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