Hi, I’m Leslie and I will be sharing the lesson Crowding Can Be Seedy. This lesson gives students hands-on experience with the effects of increasing population density. This activity is designed
for lower elementary students and focuses on the subject areas of science, social studies, and math.
The objective of this lesson is that students will be able to describe the effects of crowding on living things, name resources that plants need to grow well, and record observations of growing plants using pictures and words. There are two parts to this lesson. Part one is called the Sprouts Game.
Part 1: The Sprouts Game
In part one, you will need yarn. Just tie the yarn and lay it on the ground in a circle. This will represent a flower pot. I also like to have the words of the poem as a reference for students. This is a good idea for early readers. We now have our flower pot and we have our poem. All we need now is our seed. To begin the lesson, ask the students to volunteer to play the role of a seed. Then ask them to squat or duck down to pretend to be the seed that has not yet grown.
Use the following rhyme to signal the seed to start growing: “The sun shines, the wind blows, the rain falls, and the little seed grows.”
Now ask your student: Do you have enough soil and room for your roots? Do you have enough space for your leaves? Do you have enough light?
Now, let’s plant more seeds in the same area and repeat the growth process. One important note is to be proactive and remind students to try not to touch each other during this activity. “The sun shines, the wind blows, the rain falls, and the little seed grows.” As you can see, those flowers are starting to look a bit crowded.
Here are some discussion questions you can ask your students: What happened to some of the seeds? Some students might answer that the seeds became more crowded and had less space to spread their roots and leaves. You can also ask, how did it feel when you did not have enough room? Other discussion questions can be found in the lesson plan.
Part 2: Gardening Growth
Part 2 is called Gardening Growth and this is a gardening lab. In this part of the lesson, you will distribute radish seeds to students to plant and then the students will observe what happens when you plant one seed in a container, when you plant two seeds in a container, and when you plant three seeds in a container. Be sure that all plants receive the same amount of water and sunlight to eliminate multiple variables from the experiment.
Students will observe and record their observations every five days for about a month. Depending on the age of your students, you can modify this lesson in the following ways. Kindergarteners can record their observations by counting the leaves on the plant and draw a picture of what they see. First graders can use informal units to measure the plant and also draw a picture. Second graders can draw what they see and use a ruler to measure with formal units. The provided student worksheet has a place for students to draw and record their measurements of their plants starting from day 5 all the way to day 30. There are also short answer questions that students can complete at the end of the experiment. You can find great discussion questions to ask your students to wrap up this experiment.
Crowding Can Be Seedy, and other great lessons, can be found at www.populationeducation.org. That’s all for now!