- stem of broccoli and cauliflower
- flower
- vegetable
MA Standards:
Speaking and Listening/SL.PK.MA.1: Participate in collaborative conversations with diverse partners during daily routines and play.
Language/L.PK.MA.6: Use words and phrases acquired through conversations, listening to books read aloud, activities, and play.
MA Draft STE Standards:
Life Sciences/From Molecules to Organisms: Inheritance and Variation of Traits/LS1/3.C: Use their sense in their exploration and play to gather information. [Structure and Function]
Head Start Outcomes:
Language Development/Receptive Language: Attends to language during conversations, songs, stories, or other learning experiences.
Language Development/Expressive Language: Uses language to express ideas and needs.
Logic and Reasoning/Reasoning and Problem Solving: Classifies, compares, and contrasts objects, events, and experiences.
Science Knowledge/Scientific Skills and Method: Observes and discusses common properties, differences, and comparisons among objects.
PreK Learning Guidelines:
English Language Arts/Language 2: Participate actively in discussions, listen to the ideas of others, and ask and answer relevant questions.
Science and Technology/Living Things and Their Environment 15: Use their senses of sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste to explore their environment using sensory vocabulary.
Science and Technology/Life Sciences 10: Observe and identify the characteristics and needs of living things: humans, animals, and plants.
Talk Together: Vegetable Parts
© Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Department of Early Education and Care (Jennifer Waddell photographer). All rights reserved.
STEM Key Concepts: Many foods that animals, including humans, eat come from plants; We eat certain leaves, roots, fruits, and seeds; Plants exhibit diversity and variation
ELA Focus Skills: Listening and Speaking, Vocabulary
Point to the picture of the tomato on the Food wall. Remind children that in the story Chicks and Salsa, Farmer Nuthatcher grew many tomatoes. Say, The animals picked some of the tomatoes to make salsa.
Then point to a picture of broccoli. Say, This is another vegetable plant. The part of this plant that animals, including humans, eat is the flower. Does this look like a flower you are familiar with? What do people usually do with flowers?
Encourage children to look closely at the broccoli and cauliflower and ask questions such as,
- Do you think these plants grow aboveground or underground? Why do you think that?
- Do you think you can eat the stem? What about the leaf? Let children taste a bit of each part. Encourage them to describe how each one tastes.