Dear Purple Room Families, 

Learning is blooming in the Purple Room! The children’s questions and noticings have led us to our new exploration: seeds and plants. We are planting, taking nature walks, and learning all about how seeds grow and where our food comes from. 

Jewish Learning

As we read parshat Miketz last week and Vayigash this week, we learned about how Yosef predicted the seven year famine in Egypt, and advised Pharaoh to save food during the seven years of good harvests. This led to questions about how food grows, and what a harvest is. We talked about how grateful we are that we do not live in a famine, and have so much good food to eat. The Purple Room began learning Birkat Hamazon (blessing after meals), which we sing after lunch time. 

Science and Nature Learning

As we discussed the concepts of harvest and gathering food, we saw a lot of children exploring these ideas. Some of the children tried to plant branches on the playground, and were dismayed when they did not grow! 

We read about how seeds grow, and planted our own seeds using eggshells as the tiny pots. 

Shaking seed packets to see what seeds can sound like, We guessed the bean seeds would be bigger than the carrot seeds, because they made a louder sound.

Some children asked how we make seeds, so we did a cooking project to find some seeds. We made Israeli salad, finding the seeds inside of tomatoes and bell peppers. We also noticed that the parsley leaves had “little lines” (veins).

We found the seeds in the pepper!

To learn about how veins work in a plant, we put some celery in colored water. The next day, all the veins were colored too! We examined them with magnifying glasses to see how the veins move water through the plant. 

We went for a nature walk around our campus, finding examples of parts of plants– bud, flower, stem, leaf, seed pod, bark, roots. We even found a plant with tiny seeds that floated and blew in the wind when we gently shook the branch, just like in the book The TIny Seed! Each child gathered parts of plants that he or she found interesting. When we got back to class, we touched, smelled, and looked at our plant bits. The children then created art works by gluing their collections to paper. The plant collages are hanging in the hallway. Below are some of the conversations we recorded during this activity:

Harvey: The leaves are fuzzy and the seed pods are fuzzy too.

Carmel: This plant smells so good! It feels fuzzy.

Jonny: The seeds went flying everywhere! There was a seed in my hair!

Shepherd: I found a leaf that has lots of tiny leafs in it.

Ella: These seeds can fly like they have wings but they’re not actually wings.

Natan: If you plant the leaf it won’t grow. It has to have roots.

Daniel: I found lots of red flowers that look like feathers.

Yehonathan: I love these purple ones so much. I found so many purple flowers.

Rylan: I like the purple too. It feels good and soft. 

Nature explorers

Flying seeds!

Gluing our collections

As the children learn more about plants and seeds their questions are becoming more complex. For example: “How does bark stay on a tree?” “If plants have veins, is water like their blood?” “Why do seeds need to fly?” We will be delving into these ideas next week!

Shabbat Shalom,

Morah Shoshi and Morah Shaina