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SCIENCE ALIVE! - Grow Seed Grow

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Introducing our "Grow Kits" as well as the available seeds and plants we have to offer.

Show Transcript

(Intro with music)
Good morning. We welcome you back to "Science Alive!" My name is Mercedes Marin and we have somebody new today. Yes, thank you. I'm Peggy Gonzales. Glad to join you. Okay, I'm just gonna go over the upcoming sessions that are remaining in this semester. On November 12th, is "Talk Turkey". We are gonna be talking about a TWA Turkey Trunk. And then on December 10th, is "Adaptable Me", which is another TWA trunk. All these videos are gonna be recorded at the time of the session and they are gonna be added to a video library that will be accessed thru the ESC20 website in the Living Science Materials Center webpage. It's gonna be under the red box, under the tab that says "Videos" on it. Today's session is "Grow Seed Grow". We're gonna be introducing our "Grow Kits" as well as the seeds and plants that we have to provide for our teachers. And if we have enough time, at the end of the session, we are gonna go over some little activities that you can do at home. So, let's get started. Okay. Are these the plants we have to provide? Yes. From our greenhouse, we have Coleus, Begonias, Geraniums, we have a variety of succulents and then we also have a Wandering Jew which is very adaptable for bottle biology. And also purple heart, another succulent-like plant that also is used for bottle biology And then we also have some beautiful Ivy. Arrowhead Ivy, that are abundant and very easy to propagate. This is just a little example I have set up on my desk. Something that you can do with the bottle biology plants This is again the Arrowhead Ivy. I put some duck weed in there which is also another plant we have available and there's some freshwater snails in there, a guppy, some elodea and I think there's another bug in there, it's an aquatic bug called a Toe Biter. We also have water plants over here. We have duck weed, another aquatic plant. It just sits on top of the water. We have some hornwort here, another aquatic plant. Kind of feels like little pine needles and then this is our Elodea. So, those are our different plants. Peggy, how many plants are our teachers allowed to order? At the Elementary level, its 25 plants per teacher. Middle School, 30 and then High School, 36 That allows a vivid selection of plants, but it allows us to keep up supply for the many, many campuses that we are servicing. And if they wanted to order more, what could they do to allow them to acquire more plants than what the teacher is ordering? Well, if you put a comment in the comment section of what your specific need is, we will consider that and also, if you are ordering for more than one teacher on your grade level, we need to know how many teachers that is so that we can come to a suitable amount for delivery. As of sprouts, how many seeds to we have to offer? We have packets of seeds. 14 different beans and other vegetable seeds, and two flower seeds, sunflower and wild flower. They come in packets of 50 seeds approximately per pack. And we also have a "Grow Kit" we do, correct? We do, we do. And this Grow Kit has been revised since last year and so the contents of the folder include the seed story and about sprouts and planting. And let's see, what do I have here? Popular native plants, making biodegradable pots from newspapers, mini greenhouses, the process of photosynthesis, and parts of a seed, and then the second part of the folder focuses on cactus. And this is really a nice addition to the classroom because it focuses on desert biomes and plants that are found there. So, we are glad to have this now. Also in the kit itself, we have a Texas wildflower guide and a Texas grass guide. And a nice poster that focuses specifically on the pumpkin the life cycle of the pumpkin. And then we have this kit and it's appropriate for multiple grade levels. And one of the nice books about plants is this one from Scholastic, "How a Seed Grows" is also part of the kit. And we also have some other little plants that we have, this is common liverwort or Marchantia. It's like a moss, some teachers use this if they are building terrariums for a certain lesson plan. They can put them in here, it's safe for the animals. We also have a fern mini marsh that you can grow. This is what it looks like when it's grown. But inside the little kit, I like to call i,t comes the Fern mini marsh little disc right here here's a little cone that sits on top of it and inside this bubble wrapper we have distilled water and there is another capsule in there that has the fern spores that you would pour on top of the little disc. Let me bring out a really fun activity - the hammer. (laughter) This activity has the directions from the kit and it's called "Beating the leaf" and you can take any green leaf and put it under a piece of paper green side up, and tape it down a little bit, and as you can imagine this is a great outdoor activity. Take the class outdoors and they pick their own green leaves and then you hit the leaf, (wack, wack, wack!) with the hammer against the board (wack, wack) and then the leaf is bursting chloroplast that are in the leafs, and these chloroplasts as you can see here the bursting of them and it makes an imprint of chlorophyll. Of the green chlorophyll that comes out of the lea,f the chloroplasts are like little jelly beans, and they are microscopic, you know, you could see them in a microscope. But when you burst them, the chlorophyll that's in them comes out and makes the imprint and so, it's a really fun activity, now you might say, you might ask what's the purpose of chlorophyll? Well, the wonderful thing about plants is that they can make their own food and the green leaves have these chloroplast with chlorophyll in them, and the chlorophyll in addition to carbon dioxide and water and the light energy from the Sun, produces a sugary food that feeds the plants. So, unlike animals, plants make their own food, and it's a wonderful process, and so here with the beating of the leaves, you can actually see where the chloroplasts were in the leaf, and then you have an imprint that the chlorophyll makes on the paper as it comes out of the leaf. So, kinda cool. Very fun! (laughter) Yeah, it is fun. A little noisy, plus it's a good outdoor activity. So go catch a leaf and beat the leaf. We have some more activities that you can do starting with the seeds that you can start inside. So, what seeds did you use? We used bean sprouts, I mean mung beans to sprout those seeds and we also used peas right here and these are cucumbers. And how did you to set up this little project? Okay, they need moisture and so what happened was we took a bowl and put a saturated paper towel in the bottom and then just put some seeds in the bottom and sprayed them with a water. Not to drown them, but to keep them moist on the top as well as on the bottom where the paper is and you can tell they love it, so they are sprouting. After you sprout them, then they are easily put into soil and continue their growing process. Let me take this off, so you can see the peas. And this process took only a day and a half to two days to actually start seeing the sprouts. Oh Wow! It's really fast! And so, what you're seeing here is probably five days. So, this is something that's really inexpensive and you can put together using household items. Sure, yeah. And I have put together some little DIY biodegradable pots so you can do. I started these on the 12th. These are again, the mung beans. I'm just using some old coffee cups that I had accumulated. This is some egg crate with some egg shells in there. And here, they're not doing so well. These were the radish seeds and these are rye seeds. It's very easy to set these up too. Again, you can use household items. I recommend using biodegradable stuff so it's easier to transplant. If you put this right into the ground, the cardboard is just going to disintegrate, and it's good for the soil as well as the eggshells, too. They're very good for plant growth. I got some soil. Before I put the soil into the eggshells, I had took a push pin or safety pins and I poked little holes at the bottom of the shells for drainage purpose. Just took a coffee cup and sprinkle some dirt into i.t It doesn't matter how messy you get, this is your grow tray, also cardboard. I also have some toilet paper rolls that you can use as well. Just put them against here. Just fill it up, and then fill up the coffee cup. And then, you just make little holes with your finger, add your seeds, cover them and spray them. Very easy, very inexpensive as well. The only thing that you would probably have to buy is the potting soil. There's one more thing I'd like to show them. One of the ideas in the grow kit is a "Life Box". And, we're not gonna divulge the answer to the Life Box, but if you were to pass the Life Box around and ask the students. What is required for these plants to survive? What is necessary for their life? What do you find in the box that is necessary? And they would see some water, and they would see some soil. The question is, "What else is in the Life Box that is necessary for life? And so, it's passed around, each student takes the top off answers the question. It's a very interesting activity for discussion of what is necessary for the life of a plant. Or the life of all living things. Also, we are at the end of our session, but we're gonna end it. Thank you for participating in our "SCIENCE ALIVE" once again. We really appreciate it. If you have any questions, feel free to contact us at Living Science at ESC20.net or at 210-370-5688 Thank you again and we hope to see you next time. Goodbye.

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SCIENCE ALIVE! - Grow Seed Grow

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