Garden Lessons: Plant Parts- Part 4: LEAVES! (3rd Grade)

Grade(s): 3rd

Lesson Objective(s): Students learn all about leaves and their function in the plant

Ohio Curriculum Standard: Individuals of the same kind differ in their traits and sometimes the differences give individuals an advantage in surviving and reproducing; Organisms have different structures and behaviors that serve different functions.

Supplies Needed

• “Plant Parts” Workbooks

• Plants coloring pages

• scissors

• glue

• Pencils

• plates

• Cabbage/Kale leaves from the garden

• Knife, cutting board

• Instapot

• Salt, pepper, olive oil

• Rice (pre-made, salted)

• Poster of Plant Parts (label as go along)

• hand sanitizer

• Harmonica

Introduction (5 mins):

• Get out Plant Parts workbooks. Review: What plant part did we learn about last week? What does that plant part DO?

  • Using students’ explanation, write class description of “STEMS” on poster

• the next part of the plant we’ll be learning about are LEAVES

Activity (20 mins):

• Students read paragraph about leaves along with teacher

  • Give students a few minutes to do the fill-in-the-blank part of the booklet

  • ask after: what would happen if we cut off ALL the leaves of a plant? Do you think it would survive? Why or why not?

• If outside: Harvest cabbage leaves (1 or 2 per student). Let students try a taste test of just “raw” cabbage leaves first, them cook them with salt, pepper, & olive oil. Add pre-made rice.

• Students try sauteed cabbage & rice

• In workbook: what other Vegetables that are LEAVES do we eat or use?

  • Students can cut out examples from their coloring pages & color them (maybe go through the items as a class first, circling the items we need to cut out for the “leaves” section)

  • encourage them to think of other leaves we eat- draw them in the workbook!