It’s Friday! But wait, it’s Friday the 13th. Oh, who cares, it’s my birthday! Ok, now that that’s out of the way, one of my third grade teachers asked for some plant activities for the SMART Board, hence yesterday and today’s posts. There are two I’d like to share with you today. First is Growing Plants with Sparky (K-2) (pictured below). Included here are drag-and-drop activities for labeling a plant, helping seeds grow, ordering a plant life cycle, and matching plants to their shadows. Second is The Life Cycle of Plants (3-5). This is a very thorough interactive in that it gives information about seed growth, parts of a flower, seed dispersal, and plant identification. Included are simulations, a drag-and-drop activity, and downloadable worksheets to go along with the lesson.

To see all my posts about plants, click here.

Plant Hunters is a super cool interactive from The New York Botanical Garden that takes students on a journey through a Conservatory while learning about plants found in different biomes. From the site:

“Travel through a world of plants in the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory at The New York Botanical Garden. Discover 66 plants from around the globe that all live in the very same building. Each “house” of the Conservatory features a different biome, perfectly designed for the plants that grow there. You may be a Beginning Botanist now, but you can become a Professional Plant Hunter after you try out the seven different Plant Challenges.”

Check it out!

The Lawrence Hall of Science kids site is just amazing! There are projects, quizzes, research information, photos, and games on many science topics such as animals, oil spills, and plants, to name a few. The arcade currently has 14 games, and many of them work great on the SMART Board. Check it out!

Learning about plants, food, or farming? Check out The Potato Story. This site contains four interactive modules, including quizzes and animations, as well as information for parents and teachers.  I’d like to highlight the Growing Plants Game. Students must sequence the stages of plant growth as quickly as possible. Please make sure you check out the Lifecycles section too. The entire site is worth a look!

Food is not my normal post topic, but I thought this could be used when talking about plants or agriculture. The Eat Seasonably Fruit and Vegetable Calendar is a neat interactive calendar that tells you when fruits and vegetables are in season. From the site:

The University of Ontario Institute of Technology has many K-12 interactive learning objects for various math and science topics. Some of the topics include the Water Cycle (seen below), Plant Reproduction, and Multiplying Decimals. Most of the learning objects contain student and teacher resources, as well as animations and quizzes on the topic. These all work great on the SMART Board! To find the complete list, I simply searched “learning object” on their website.

SparkIsland.com is a subscription-based website that offers online learning activities for kids aged 3-11. However, there are a few free activities as well, such as the Seed Cycles interactive seen below. An explanation of the life cycle of a seed is given first, and then it concludes with several touch-and-drag sequencing games that work great on the SMART Board.

Check out “A Touch of Class“, a plant/animal classification interactive found on ScienceNetLinks.com. Have the students come up to the SMART Board and touch all of the plants or animals that fit the description given at the top of the screen. Once the answers are chosen, touch Go to see how many are correct and move to the next round. Find more interactive activities on this site by clicking here and looking for the “SNL” icon.

Here are two life cycle activities, plants and animals, that work well on the SMART Board. Marilyn Western shared this on her wonderful site, Technology Tips for Classroom Teachers.

Life Cycle of a Frog