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The garlic was already in the ground and the aim of this lesson was to plant some peas and some strawberry runners. This was a good time to introduce the topic of plant reproduction. The main idea was that it is possible to have either sexual or vegetative propagation in plants - or both! 1. Garlic Garlic is a bulb and it will propagate by growing a lot more individual bulbs around the old one every winter. We split a garlic bulb in half lengthwise and looked at how it grows.
Several cloves were split open and the children used magnifying glasses to examine them. Experiment: We planted two pots with four garlic cloves in each. In the first pot we placed the cloves right way up and in the second we planted the cloves upside down. 2. Strawberries Strawberries have beautiful white flowers and the seeds are on display on the outside of the berries, however strawberry plants also produce runners which are very easy to grow and are always used for propagating. I showed the class how to take cuttings from strawberry runners and we planted some of the smaller ones in a pot by the window of the classroom. 
Figure3: Strawberry runners 3. Peas Peas were chosen as a good example of a plant that we always grow from seeds. 
Figure 4: Reproductive cycle of peas .The children really enjoyed discussing plant reproduction and related some of their own experiences eg. hand pollinating pumpkins. 4. Classroom Work Equipment needed: Straight sided glass jars, blotting paper, pea seeds, notebook and pencils. The children had science notebooks that were part of their normal science classroom work. The following experiment was recorded in these books over the next few weeks. Experiment: The children were divided into groups of three and were shown how to grow a pea in a glass jar with blotting paper 
Figure 5: Growing a pea in a glass jar. |
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