ingridscience

Show students the technique of printing:
Lay a leaf or plant structure on the ink pad and press on it with the paper towel to cover the underside with ink.
Lay on the paper, lay a sheet of newspaper over, and rub with your fingers to transfer the ink to the paper. Rub firmly and evenly without moving the leaf or paper.
Make a design or picture with different leaves and different ink colours.

Discussion on what you see in the prints:
What are these structures that show up in the prints? The vessels that carry food and water around the plant.
The underside of the leaf often has the most prominent vessels. These are phloem, carrying sugars from the leaves to the rest of the plant. (The xylem vessels carry water from the roots up to the leaves).

Leaves rot on the ground with the help of bacteria and fungi. Leaf skeletons (e.g. magnolia leaf) shows where bacteria and fungi have digested away the thinner parts of the leaf. The thicker vessels are still there.

Please note that in a class of students it is likely that one of them is at least partially colourblind (1 in 12 males are colourblind). As this is an activity distinguishing colours, these students will not be able to tell some colours apart and perceive some colours differently. The common red/green colour blindness means reds and greens (or colours containing reds and greens such as browns) look similar. More information at colourblindawareness.org and colorblindguide.com/post/the-advantage-of-being-colorblind.

Add a drops of colours to the tray and look for new colours.

For a lesson on Fall leaf colours:
Use only yellow, red and green dyes.
Look for which colours can mask others - see attached worksheet.
The yellow is masked by both green and red.
A yellow pigment is always in green leaves, but is usually masked by the green pigment. In the fall, when the green pigment decays, the yellow is revealed, turning Fall leaves golden.
Red fall leaves also have yellow pigment. In these leaves the green pigment has decayed and new red pigment is made. The yellow is still hidden under the red, though sometimes leaves look orange when there is less red pigment and the yellow shows through a little.

Scavenger hunt:
Go on a scavenger hunt for plants, rocks and other natural materials. Gather at least 12 different items, and gather enough of each for one for each player and one additional one.
Each player choses 9 items and glues them to their board.

Play bingo:
One person leads the bingo game by holding up an item.
If a player has that item on their bingo board, they cover it with an egg carton cup.
First to cover all spaces calls Bingo!

Print out the template (attached below) on letter-sized paper.
Cut each sheet on the solid lines, to make 6 helicopter templates.
Hand a template out to each student.
Students cut on the dotted lines, then lift up the outside ends and paperclip together. (With younger students practice using the paper clip on the uncut template first.)
Write name on.

Hold with the paperclip hanging at the bottom and drop from a height - over a balcony is ideal, but standing on a chair works fine.
Watch the helicopters start to spin after falling a short distance.

The paper clip models the actual seed (which will become the plant) and the paper part models the wings that make it spin as it falls. The spinning slows how fast it falls, so that any wind carries the seed sideways away from the parent plant.

Discuss how maple, sycamore and other helicopter-like seeds have a similar shape and spin in the same way as they drop from the tree when the seeds are ripe. As they descend slowly, any wind will move them sideways, so that they fall further from the parent tree, and are more likely to find enough sun, water and space to grow into a tree.

Collect real maple seeds and drop the to watch them spin. They will not always find the right orientation to start spinning from lower drop heights, so try a few times. (I have also found that the one-winged blades spin more reliably than the two-winged, so break them in half if necessary.)

With the paper model helicopters, experiment with longer blades, more paperclips for extra weight, different thicknesses of paper to find out which ones stay aloft the longest.
Optional: try outside in a light wind, or add a fan or blow dryer from the side to see how far they can drift away from where they were dropped.

Alternative design from here:
https://www.exploratorium.edu/science_explorer/roto-copter.html
https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/205711main_Rotor_Motor.pdf
There are many other designs online - search for "paper helicopter".

If outdoors: hunt for seeds, or places that seeds will be.
Students may need examples of seeds to find, or show students dead flowers and the base of the flower where the seeds will be forming. Point out other seeds hanging from trees and in grass heads if students are not sure where to find seeds. Tell them that seeds are inside berries.

Optional: ask them to draw a sketch of each kind of seed they find on a map of the garden they are in.

If indoors: give students a seed collection to look at, classify and draw (see attached worksheet).

Classifying seed dispersal mechanisms
Either give students a worksheet (see attachment) or add students' drawings to a board, placing each seed in a quadrant of a board divided by dispersal mechanism (wind, animal, self dispersal). Ask students to find the actual (often tiny) seed in each case.
Discuss how the various structures attached to the seed help the seeds spread away from the parent plant (called the "dispersal mechanism"). Starting with the wind blown seeds is the most accessible for students to understand the concept of dispersal mechanism, with the familiar maple seed helicopter.

Examples:
Wind dispersal: light structures with a large surface area make the seeds float slowly down to the ground, and are blown sideways by the wind to land away from the parent plant e.g. the downy parachutes of dandelion, the helicopter wings of maple).
Animal dispersal: berries (that get eaten and pooped out far away e.g. rosehip), seeds with hooks or barbs (that get caught on animals' fur e.g. burdock).
Self dispersal: pods that explode open (e.g. fireweed) or "pepper pots" that sprinkle seeds away (e.g. poppy).
Optional: Water dispersed seeds e.g. coconut can be added to the last quadrant of the board.
Some seeds are dispered by more than one method e.g. douglas fir is eaten by small mammals and birds, as well as wind dispersed by it's small blade.
Try these webpages for images of seed dispersal mechanisms:
https://amoobabatundeyakub.blogspot.ca/2014/06/dispersal-of-fruit-and-s…
http://maggiesscienceconnection.weebly.com/uploads/5/1/0/5/5105330/2467…

Seeds in the plant life cycle
Place seeds on a board, then while asking students what they know already about the cycle, place a small plant, then a flower, on the board. Draw arrows to connect the plant parts into a life cycle.