On Tuesday, February 11 all 5th graders planted Swiss Rainbow Chard Seeds to kick off one of our spring garden experiments. We made many observations about soil as we began to study how using vermicompost, a store bought seed starter, or a mix of the two affect how chard plants grow. Students are completing a full experiment plan on this study and we will share our results along with other studies at the GK-12 Science Symposium on Sunday, April 26 on the UMC campus. We will also be sharing our Garden Ecosystem display at the symposium. The display is a visual representation of our own garden observations at Grant School and the CCUA Urban Farm coupled with results for our Garden Ecosystem Survey. Finally, we will see a group of garden ecosystem presentations from Maggie Sperkowski, our guest scientist from UMC. Scroll down to see updates on our experiments and progress on our display. See the process of our Garden Ecosystem Display. See exciting results of our community based learning.
Here are the final versions of our insect and soil posters in jpeg files:
DAY 71!!! Chard Plants: What a difference a week makes!! What a difference two weeks make!! Below is another graph from the end of our experiment. Below that are pics from week 10 and you can clearly observe aphid destruction! These results and conclusions will be shared by kids at the GK-12 science symposium this Saturday. We will also have artifacts too! Way to go super scientists!
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| We conclude it takes about 4 weeks for aphids to affect plant length and width, and leaf number! |
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| Lady Beetle plants - Week 10 |
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| Aphid Plants Week 10! |
DAY 56 Chard Plants: Students in the Ecoschoolhouse measured and watered this week. We took time to carefully observe control plants for aphids and remove them if necessary. Students also recorded observations of other treatments as well. For the aphids plants we recorded descriptive words and phrases like "floppy leaves, aphids on stems, very wilted leaves, plant is dead, aphids are grouping up, droopy leaves, aphids on small leaves" and for the lady beetle plants we saw "dead lady beetles, yellow and green stems, reddish tint, strong and standing up". You can easily see the differences in the descriptions. However, look at the graph below of our longest leaves: the aphids are the longest! This emphasizes the importance of observations. While the leaves in the aphids are the longest, I think most students would prefer to eat the lady beetle chard! We will post some pics of these observations after we measure tomorrow.
DAY 51 Chard Plants: Mr. K's class did a phenomenal job of data collection in this 7th week. Our major observation was a cross contamination of Aphids onto our control plants! We think this may have happened during our data collection/watering. Today Ms. Maggie Science carefully removed Aphids from the controls and put them into the Lady Beetle treatment with a dozen more Lady Beetles. After looking at our initial graphs below for the insect experiment we noticed the Aphid plants have the most leaves but the leaves are on average thinner and shorter than the plants in the control and the Lady Beetle treatment. Next week we will be working super hard on our results to share in our poster for the GK-12 symposium. Also, we will be researching our garden organisms for our Garden Ecosystem display.
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| APHID CITY! |
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| SCIENTIST HARD AT WORK |
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| SUPER SCIENTIST DATA COLLECTION! |
DAY 42 Chard Plants: 6 weeks into a chard plant's life - chard plants that have different soil and different insects! 6 All-Star scientists came in to help measure and water over Spring Break. We are still organizing the data but our initial observations show not much difference in plant growth. We also noticed there are not many lady beetles left in our lady beetle/aphid treatment. That is perplexing scientists who have all sorts of thoughts why. Maybe more important are there are no aphids in the lady beetle/aphid treatment either! Another observation is there are plenty more aphids in the aphids treatment but the leaves still look healthy. Below you can see the plant progress and evidence of aphids too.
DAY 37 Chard Plants: Whew, we really made progress this week. Students continued to look at experiment methods and graphs as we make our poster for the GK-12 Symposium on April 26th. The exciting part is about the data and watering from Tuesday. We will have the data graphs asap but you may have guessed which soil treatment has the "best" plants. As a class we chose a watering method based of last year's 5th graders' garden watering experiment. The even more exciting development is the beginning of our insect experiment. We have treated 20 plants to aphids, 20 to aphids and ladybugs and we have one control group too, all wrapped in fabric and ready to study. Soon you can see pics below of our new setup, kids watering, observing insects and applying the insect treatments. Enjoy! Anyone want to come water and measure Tuesday over Spring Break?
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| # of chard sprouts graph from our very first data set |
DAY 28 Chard Plants: Science today included labeling treatments, collecting and recording data, transplanting plants and working together (teachers and kids included)! Scientists helped give our plants new homes. We now have 3 tables with a mixture of the soil treatments. Each table will soon receive a new treatment to help study garden ecosystems. Tomorrow we will start to analyze our data so far.
Day 27 Chard Plants: Another wow! Tomorrow we transplant to larger pots in anticipation of our insect ecosystem experiment. Things are coming together. It is no secret to the kids the compost plants are doing better. We will be analyzing our data to make conclusions on the soil experiment soon.
Day 23 Chard Plants: Wow! The progress of growing leaves and stalks is evident daily to the kids without getting out a ruler.
Day 22 Chard Plants: Its amazing how well they bounce back after being attacking by 5th graders with rulers! Super food indeed!
Day 21 Chard Plants: We have true foliage laves on most plants! Students recorded 4 points of data today: hypocotyl length, number of true leaves, longest leaf length and widest leaf length. Next week we will collect these same 4 data points and graph our results so far!
Day 15 Chard Plants: They look much better today after fresh water and better access to light.
Day 14 Chard Plants: We thinned our plants today and started collecting measurement data. We learned a little bit about plants so we knew what we were measuring. Our chard plants all have their cotyledon leaves and only a few showed the beginnings of foliage. So we were able to measure the hypocotyl length only. Our data showed the worm soil has an average hypocotyl length of 2.40 cm, the mix has an average hypocotyl length of 2.75 cm and the seed starter has an average hypocotyl length of only 1.95 cm. We are starting to wonder if the plants that grew so fast and now are spindly with a ling hypocotyl are the healthiest or not. Some students hypothesized the other plants will grow spindly too. We will have to wait and see what happens!
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| All Star scientists from Mr. K's room measuring hypocotyls. |
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| A chard plant showing its true foliage starting to grow in between the cotyledons. |
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| Our first sprouts are now spindly with long hypocotyls. |
Day 13 Chard Plants: Students observed 3 new plants sprouted over the weekend. Tomorrow we will thin the plants and start measuring.
Day 12 Chard Plants: Can you tell a difference in the pictures yet?
Day 9/10 Chard Plants: You may be able to see almost all our pods finally have sprouts. Kids are used to using the grid to locate our plants. Next week we will start measuring. You can use the spreadsheet picture to see what days pods had new sprouts.
Day 8 Chard Plants: Things are progressing seemingly fine. We still have to look for signs of damping of. However, we used our grid to document today's new sprouts. Students observed 20/24 vermicomposting pods have sprouted, 17/24 mixed soil pods have sprouted, and only 8/24 store bought seed starter pods have sprouted. We also use math to convert these fractions to simplest form and/or percents. Students are wondering why we see the worm compost growing plants faster (I have no idea so we may do some research soon!). Also, students are wondering why column K (worm compost) has no plants - maybe we missed those seeds when planting?
Day 7 Chard Plants: More sprouts today. We used grid points to locate plants and name the pods (A1, A2 etc...) We can refer to our plants using this system as we start measuring next week. It was very obvious to kids more plants have sprouted in the worm soil so far. In fact, 11/24 vermicomposting pods have sprouted, 8/24 mixed pods have sprouted and only 3/24 seed starting pods have sprouted. Tomorrow, we hope to see more.
Day 6 Chard Plants: Okay, so far so good. The trays have dried out and there are a few more sprouts - only in the vermicompost and the mix. Exciting results to share tomorrow! Maybe we will even be able to take a measurement!
Day 5 Chard Plants: Oh no! Mr. Nies came in on this Sunday and saw "fuzz" on the soil!!!! I was already worried I used too much water. This can cause damping off, a term used to indicate fungus growth due to overwatering! Our experiment may change to see how vermicomposting handles damping off compared to the store bought soil! I immediately began trying to dry out the soil by removing the cover, carefully removing the "fuzz" (which only appeared on the store bought soil), and then turning on the classroom fans to circulate some air. And after all that, there is a silver lining: can you see the sprout (right in the middle)?
Day 3 Chard Plants: No Change
Day 2 Chard Plant: No Change
Day 1 Chard Plants: No Change
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