Year 2: What is inside a seed? What is the life cycle of a bean plant?

This week, the children set up their experiments to see whether a plant will grow if we take away one of its basic needs. There are 5 pots, and four of them are missing either soil, water, light or temperature. The fifth one has all of the things, to prove that it will otherwise grow. The children are very excited to see if all of their cress seeds will grow over the next couple of weeks. 

The children then followed this up by investigating what is inside a seed. They took off the seed coat, and opened up a kidney bean to find the baby plant and the food store: everything that the plant needs to start growing. The children then discussed the life cycle of the bean and drew some lovely scientific diagrams.