5th Graders.

Sorry for my little blog break... my little guys took the writing SOL here in Virginia today and yesterday. These past few weeks have been a little nutso... encouraging them as writers, while trying to make sure they are as well-prepared as possible. Now it's over... and I am beyond proud of them.

Anyways... (I use that word way too much. Need to expand my vocab.) we are learning about the five kingdoms that scientists classify with... My kiddos were having a bit of a hard time distinguishing between vascular and nonvascular plants... so we did an experiment :)

Celery is a vascular plant... so I wanted to show them how things travel through the plant using the 'veins.' This also helped my kiddos with the independent/dependent variables they struggle with always. Ask me why 10-year-olds should be able to identify the control in an experiment? THEY ARE TEN.

We put the same amount of water in two cups... put food coloring in one cup... and then cut the celery and put one stalk in each cup.

I don't have any idea why this is so grainy... but this is the 'right after we put the celery in' picture.

and this is the 'after two days of sitting in food coloring' picture. SO COOL.