Carrot Inquiry--Part Two

"The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery."

~Mark van Doren

Over the past week, the students and I have been discovering answers to our inquiry questions about carrots. We confirmed some theories, began a few experiments, gave our creative energies a workout and honed fine motor skills.  We aren't finished yet, however.  Here is a sampling of what we have been up to.

After discussing the properties of 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional shapes, we examined a tray full of carrots from our garden.  Then, we created a graph to show what shape we thought most of the carrots were.  We analyzed the data and watched a short video, which confirmed our results.

The activity below didn't answer any of our inquiry questions, but it did allow us to practice one of our state standards.  The children weighed and measured carrots to determine which were the heaviest, longest, etc. 

These videos show interviews with some of the students using the same materials.  I love how their thinking becomes visible as they work! 

The students used ultra-fine Sharpie markers to draw carrots in detail and then painted them using liquid watercolor paints. 

One of the students' favorite activities was getting to peel carrots.  They would have done this all day long if I would have let them!

We made torn paper carrots and labeled the parts. This covered another state standard: I can name the parts of plants.

The students wanted to know what the top of the carrot was called.  We planted carrot tops to see what would happen and put them in our kindergarten greenhouse, which was purchased by our PTA.  After a few days, the students observed that stems and leaves were growing out of the carrots.  This was confirmed by a book we read called Carrots Grow Underground. I have never planted the top of a carrot, so this was a really neat experiment for me! 

We read the following books:

We also watched another video about carrots, which helped us find the answers to a few more of our questions. This week, we will be wrapping up our inquiry by planting carrot seeds in our Root-Vue Farm and making carrot-applesauce muffins. I also made some carrot cake play-doh for the students to explore using their senses. Finally, my challenge will be to create documentation panels to show the thinking that was made visible and the answers they discovered. In the future, I would like to create the panels as we go, but since this was my first classroom inquiry project I put it off to the end in order to focus on the steps of inquiry and to hone my skills.

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