Botany | My Own Montessori

At MOM, we like to expand on our cultural curriculum as much as possible, so in a three-year rotation, we devote a whole year to one of the three subjects in our cultural curriculum: botany, zoology, and continents of the world. This year, we focused on botany.

We started with a general classification of Living/Non-Living and explored the characteristics of living/non-living things.

My Own Montessori Oakland Rockridge Preschool Botany identification

Next, we talked about the basic needs of living things, and learned that plants need air, water, sun, and soil to live. Our Basic Needs Deprivation experiment proved that plants need to have all four to thrive.

My Own Montessori Oakland Rockridge Preschool Botany seedlings

For the rest of the year, we spent a whole month taking a closer look at each part of the plant. And what better way to start our botanical journey than germinate a seed and plant it in our own garden! The fava bean we planted in September has grown into a very healthy plant and is soon going to be ready to harvest!

My Own Montessori Oakland Rockridge Preschool Botany propagating seeds

My Own Montessori Oakland Rockridge Preschool Botany our own seeds

My Own Montessori Oakland Rockridge Preschool Botany seeds growing

My Own Montessori Oakland Rockridge Preschool Botany we have beans

Next, we looked at roots, and had great fun identifying the parts of the root as we were pulling weeds in our planter boxes.

My Own Montessori Oakland Rockridge Preschool Botany roots grow

We learned about stems and used a fun experiment to show how they transfer water and nutrients from the roots to the rest of the plant.

My Own Montessori Oakland Rockridge Preschool Botany flowering

Next: leaves. Our botany cabinet served as a great resource to match real leaves to the various leaf shapes and learn their names.

My Own Montessori Oakland Rockridge Preschool Botany identifying

The older children enjoyed making books of the parts of the leaves, and writing a leaf exploration report of their favorite leaf they picked from a collection of leaves from teacher Caroline’s very own garden.

My Own Montessori Oakland Rockridge Preschool Botany plant journaling

My Own Montessori Oakland Rockridge Preschool Botany plant growth phases

Needless to say, one of the most popular was the “pink, frilly” leaf.

My Own Montessori Oakland Rockridge Preschool Botany frilly 1

My Own Montessori Oakland Rockridge Preschool Botany frilly 2

There was even a very large leaf that made a rather fancy hat!

My Own Montessori Oakland Rockridge Preschool Botany fancy hats 1

After leaves, we moved on to flowers. We matched real flowers to pictures, learned about the parts of the flower, and our afternooners even dissected a flower and labeled each part.

My Own Montessori Oakland Rockridge Preschool Botany flower types 1

My Own Montessori Oakland Rockridge Preschool Botany flower types 2

My Own Montessori Oakland Rockridge Preschool Botany flower part identification

And of course, we had to learn about Georgia O’Keeffe and get inspired by her beautiful flower paintings.

My Own Montessori Oakland Rockridge Preschool Botany flower art

Finally, we arrived at our last botany unit, fruits. Fruits come from flowers, and contain seeds. It is sometimes hard to tell what is a fruit and what is a vegetable, but we figured out a good way of finding out! Simply cut the fruit/vegetable open, and see if has seeds inside (or outside, like strawberries) and you’ll have your answer!