Planting a Paperwhite

We read the book, Paperwhite, by Nancy Elizabeth Wallace. In the book, Lucy the bunny visits her neighbor throughout the cold winter months. Together, they 'make a little bit of spring' by planting an indoor paperwhite bulb and watching it grow. After reading the book, we passed around a paperwhite bulb (below) and talked about it using our five senses (although we agreed that we did not need to taste it :) ).

 

After passing around the bulb, we took turns putting rocks into the glass jar like Lucy (from the book) did. We talked about the noise that it made and used our ears to listen to each rock clink into the jar.

 

We used a measuring cup to pour water into the jar, and settled the bulb on top of the rock nest, just like in the book.

 

We drew pictures of what the bulb in the jar looked like. We will draw a picture each week and observe how our bulb changes over time.

 

Here is the picture of the inquiry chart that we completed. We talked about how scientists 'notice' and 'wonder' about things. All of the sentences were dictated by the children. I thought it was neat that they thought the bulb "smelled like perfume" and "smelled like fresh". I also was very happy that all of the children, after planting the bulb, had something that they wondered about. They are very anxious to see what happens to the bulb and how long it will take to "open up". :) Stay tuned... I will post pictures as it blooms!