Fancy Flowering Plants

    FANCY FLOWERING PLANTS                        

We are learning about flowering plants. You should always give them water, sun, and light. Plants can make their own food. The flowering plants, also known as angiosperm, are the most diverse group of land plants. These characteristics include flower, endosperm within seeds. The ancestors of flowering plants diverse from gymnosperms around 245-202 million years ago, and the first flowering plants are known to exist are from 160 million years ago. It replaced conifers as the dominant trees only around 60-100 million years ago.  

This picture is of a bee pollinating a beautiful flower.

               Plants Are Beautiful

                  Plants do much more than just add more beauty to our world! Plants give us the food we eat and are useful in many ways. Lettuce and spinach the leaves of plants.                                                    

 If you eat carrots or beets you are eating roots. Celery and asparagus are stems. Broccoli and cauliflower are flowers. Rice and beans are seeds. You may think all fruits are sweet, but tomatoes and cucumbers are fruits, too.                                                                                            

This is a cool picture of an aster! An aster is a star shaped flower.

Non-Flowering Plants

NON-FLOWERING PLANTS

This is a fern a Non-flowering  plant

  Non-flowering plants are those plants that make seeds within cones or produce spores instead of Non-flowering plants pines. Spruce or cedar trees that produce cones ferns. Mosses and lichens that produce spores. These spores are arranged at the bottom of a fern frond or leaf. They contain many tiny spores. Most Non-flowering seeds plants are Evergreen. Evergreen are trees that lose a few leaves at a time and grow new leaves replace them. As a result the trees always look green.

By: Patrick, Owen, Natalie, Breazia, and Luke

 

         How seeds scatter

This is a pinecone that falls on the ground and becomes a new tree.

 

  Seeds are scattered in many ways. Some seeds have wings like structures that can be carried by the wind. Other seeds have hooks that stick to the fur of an animal. The seeds travel with the animal. When an animal eats fruit the seeds pass through its body, and then get left behind. Under the right conditions it can grow into a new plant.

                                  

HOW SPORES GROW

This is a full-grown spore.

      Spores grow inside through spore cases. The cases protect the spores from open the spores are released. They drift through the air and then settle. Spores that land on the damp ground can grow into moss or fern plants.

 

1-2-3..BLAST OFF!!!

To go along with our unit on  safety procedures and steps of a simple scientific investigation we built our very own paper rockets to launch. Students had to create a testable question for their experiment, make predictions, decide the manipulated variable and finally test out the infamous rockets with the launcher. Here are a few pictures from our experiments....

PBL's, landfills, Action Plans.....so much going on in our classroom!!

Last week while researching ways to better our environment we stumbled on the word "landfill." After researching all week  the components of a landfill and ways we can reduce landfills in our area we decided to make an "edible landfill." Here are a few pictures of our edible landfills.

 

The actual edible landfill before it was devoured.

The supplies needed for our landfills.

PBL....REAL WORLD

PBL'S

 

 

We are taking a different approach here at OES for learning. We want our 4th graders to become THINKERS in REAL WORLD situations. The first PBL our 4th grade will be working on is determine how big our Carbon Footprint is and how we can take the information we have learned and better our environment. The first week of school we collected our snack trash to see just how many pieces were accumulated over one week...........Our class collected 54 pieces of trash the first week. The second week we tried to think smart with the trash we used and we cut down our trash to just 30 pieces. We are making BIG changes in our classroom! 

We also participated in the "One Small Square" activity to see how to make detailed observations. We read the book One Small Square:Backyard by Donald Silver and headed outside with our shovels, squares, and pencils to observe. We used our 5 senses to make observations and soon we will determine how we can help our environment one small square at a time.

What will we think of next?????



Final Products

The class worked SO hard on their Native American homes. Here are the finished products!

Jonathan and Autumn built their "Chickee" and made another box for the campfire.

 

 Dayawna and Patrick made the "Earth Lodge."

 Natalie and Alesia worked so hard to build the perfect "Hogan."

 Kate, Anna Leigh, and Shaun made the "Longhouse" they also built their very own front porch, to add an extra touch they added the Native American by the front porch.

" Plankhouse" built by Bryce, Brady and Cole

 The "Pueblo"  constructed by Owen and Sydney

 "Tepee" built by Ellie and Emily...notice the Native American outside of the tepee.

 "Wigwam" built by Austin, Wilson and Leilah, notice the land around the wigwam and the small pond they built

PERFECT JOB  EVERYONE!

Native American Homes

Native American Homes

Today we built our very own Native American homes in class. Each student was assigned a region to research and home to build. Thank you parents for all of the donations to help make this possible!

 

 

Autumn and Jonathan building their "Chickee"

Autumn building her Chickee

Dayawna and Patrick building their "Earth Lodge "

Owen building his "Pueblo"

Emily and Ellie building their "Tepee"