April Showers Bringing May Flowers!

This week in science we have been talking about the life cycle of plants. It's a perfect time of year for this lesson since all of the beautiful flowers are starting to bloom, and it's finally warming up around here! 

We started by reading "A New Plant" from ULS on our iPads with our sixth grade peers. The kids enjoyed enlarging the pictures to check out the different parts of the plant.

Next we moved on to our comprehension questions to check for understanding. As many of you know, one of my favorite things about ULS is that it provides differentiated materials to address different ability levels. Worksheets like the ones below used to take me an ETERNITY back in my pre-ULS days. I would have to make all of my own worksheets, adding pictures from Boardmaker. Now I just determine student levels and print the corresponding worksheets. Easy peasy.

Here's a Level 3 worksheet for my readers:

Then it was on to the super fun, hands-on part of our lesson: planting!

Lakeshore Learning makes these awesome mini-greenhouses that we are able to stick on the classroom window.

The kids wet some paper towels then carefully spread their choice of seeds (we had sweet pea and tomato seeds).

After folding their seeds into the paper towels, our peers helped us place the little seed packets in the greenhouses.

Everyone hung his or her labeled greenhouse on the window, and we are excited to watch our plants grow!

Here are all of the mini-greenhouses. How cute are they?!

Definitely feels like spring in our room now!

HAPPY ((ALMOST)) FRIDAY!