The Story of Frog Belly Rat Bone - Plants: 7-9
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The Story of Frog Belly Rat Bone by Timothy Basil Ering involves around a boy, living in the grim and depressing Cementland, who searches amongst the heaping piles of junk for some treasure, something beautiful. Eventually he finds a box and with an instruction to plant it into the earth. This was a most unpromising instruction and nothing happens. The next day he returns to the spot and the thing he planted into the earth has been dug up. So the boy creates a guard monster to prevent anything else happening to his treasure. This is Frog Belly Rat Bone who springs into life and gets to work protecting the treasure from three robbers - a rat, a rabbit and a fruitfly. Slowly but surely transformation happens in Cementland. The robbers join with Frog Belly Rat Bone and the boy to tend to the treasures as they grow. Cementland is now full of colour. The story of Frog Belly Rat Bone provides a good setting for investigating plants and their benefits to our environment. Children could :
Key scientific vocabulary: air, nutrients, soil, fertiliser, transported, life cycle, pollination, seed formation, seed dispersal Other fiction books with a similar theme include: The Hidden Forest – Jeannie Baker George and Flora’s Secret Garden – Jo Elworthy George saves the world by lunchtime – Jo Elworthy Stick Man – Julia Donaldson & Axel Scheffler Seeds of Change:Wangari’s Gift to the World – Sonia Lynn Sadler Dandelion Seed – Joseph Anthony |
Plants: roots and shoots
A scheme of work by Hamilton Trust in which children find out about the parts of flowering plants and their functions, and investigate the conditions affecting plant growth and how water is transported in plants.
Ideas are also provided for learning about the stages of plant life cycles, in particular seed formation, dispersal and germination. Many children hold misconceptions believing that plants need the same conditions for seed germination and plant growth, so it is important to distinguish between the two. Whilst some seeds can germinate without soil, they cannot grow to mature plants without a source of nutrients.
Bee detectives
This resource by FERA ( Food and environmental research agency) includes some practical ideas such as a Pollination roleplay where children model the process of insect pollination. They also are encouraged to investigate why been numbers are declining. This resource includes a short video to find out the job of a scientist at the Bee Unit in Fera. Observing and classifying are highlighted as key skills used in identifying insect pests.
Education pack: Spring - pollination
Opal have created this really useful pack of outdoor activities, which aim to develop an understanding of the importance of pollination in the wider environment. Designed for use in the school grounds or when visiting a wildlife area, they link to the topics of plants and animals. Children look for signs of spring, evidence of different forms of pollination by wind or animal, they identify parts of a plant and how some plants are attractive to pollinators. The children could use their observations to help them as they create a plant lifecycle poster / drama / dance or model.
Fruits, Seeds and Their Dispersal
This is a simple checklist to help children identify the main characteristics of fruits and seeds by making careful observations, drawing them and labelling their important features. They can then group them according to their dispersal mechanism and use this knowledge to construct a simple dichotomous key.
