Thread by @IdolScribblings

#ScienceLessonAtHome of the day.

A Mazing Plant

Learn about sensitivity in living things by getting a plant to grow through a maze. 🧵

It will give the plant (and your kids) something more interesting to do than just staring mournfully out of the window.

You will need:

✅ A shoebox (or box of similar size)
✅ Card
✅Scissors
✅Sellotape
✅ A small plastic tub (eg. Empty yogurt pot).
✅ A little compost
✅ 5-6 Pea seeds (dried peas should germinate as long as they've not been in the cupboard too long).

1. Soak your pea seeds / dried peas in room temperature water for 12 hours.

2. Take your cardboard box and stand it up on the narrow end with the lid facing you. Remove the lid and keep it safe.

3. Carefully cut a hole about 2-3cm in diameter, to one side in the top narrow end of the shoe box.

4. Use the card and Sellotape to create a maze inside the box for the plant to grow through. Make sure there is enough room below the maze to pop your little planter in.

5. 2/3 fill your little tub with compost. Put in your pea seeds, then top off with another cm of compost. Water until the compost is moist.

6. Put your little planter into the bottom of the maze, put the lid back on the shoe box.

7. Leave your shoebox on a windowsill. The plant inside should be checked every day and watered if necessary. Leave the lid off the box for as short a time as possible when watering. This stage will go on for a few weeks.

8. After a few weeks your plant should have germinated and grown through the maze to the light hole at the top.

The Science at Work

All living things display the 7 signs of life:
Movement (growing towards the light)
Reproduction (making seeds)
Sensitivity (detecting the light)
Growth
Respiration
Egestion (getting rid of waste)
Nutrition (getting or making energy e.g. Photosynthesis.)

These can be remembered with the Mnemonic MRS GREN.

This experiment is a nifty demonstration that plants have both movement and sensitivity. Many young children have a misconception that plants don't move, or that they cannot detect their surroundings.

This effect is called Phototropism.

Another example is my Money Tree which has grown this way towards the light from my kitchen window. (I kept forgetting to turn it).

Plants need sunlight to make their own food by a process called Photosynthesis. So it's pretty important to be able to grow towards the light.

Adaptations for Age Groups

KS2 - Learn the signs of life listed above (MRS GREN) discuss what each word means. Draw a picture of your experiment. It should have 7 labels. Each label should explain how your experiment demonstrates that plants are alive using MRS GREN.

KS3 - Revise MRS GREN (some kids may know it as MRS NERG).

Focus on the Nutrition and Respiration part. Plants take in sunlight, carbon dioxide and water and use for photosynthesis which makes sugars. The plant also takes in oxygen and uses respiration to turn those sugars...

...into useable energy.

Look at other ways plants use sensitivity to find light and water.

Such as a root-bound pot, or sunflower heads following the sun every day.

KS4 - We can adapt this experiment to explore another factor. The colour of light that is most important to plants. However, we will need to construct more than one maze.

Make identical several mazes. Cover the light hole at the top of each box with a coloured filter...

...you can make these from different coloured cellophane sweet wrappers or cut squares out of some waste plastic film or an old take away tub and colour them evenly with markers.

Have at least a red, a blue and a green filter (the three primary colours of light).

Does the plant get confused in any of the boxes?

Research which wavelengths of light plants use for photosynthesis. Find out about chlorophyll and what colour it is. (Remember green objects appear green because they reflect green light, they don't absorb it).

This is also a good opportunity to look at germination.

Sprout a few pea seeds separately in a jam jar. Plant them against the glass so you can see them. Take a close look at a freshly sprouting peas at different stages. Produce a labelled diagram of a germinating pea.

There is a good explanation of germination to be found here bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guide…

That's all for today.
I hope you have fun with this simple but very satisfying project.

Oh, by the way. Young pea sprouts make a delicious salad. Plant any left over peas in a shallow tray of compost and start cropping after 1-2 weeks!