Last week, I took my students to the park near their house to do some detective work on plants. I noticed early on this year their genuine interest in nature, as the girls were actively picking wish flowers and blowing their seeds across the grass. I determined a perfect lesson to connect to their interests would dig deeper into discovering plants life-cycles.

The teacher tip here is to observe your child first to find a topic of natural interest. In this blog post, I am going to teach you how to turn that interest into a book lesson to engage your child wholeheartedly in the topic. This set-up works for any interest! Though I will be giving you an example of the framework using the book “Plants Can’t Sit Still” by Rebecca E. Hirsch, in case you want to use this content. There is a youtube recorded version of the book here –> Plants Can’t Sit Still.

1. Start with a Question

A good question sparks dialogue around the topic you are teaching, without giving the child any prompted “right” answer. A question should be simple, easy to comprehend, yet have a complex or not straightforward answer. Often you can get a question from a picture book by identifying what the book is trying to teach, then asking about prior knowledge connected to the topic. For example, a book about trucks going to the dump for a preschooler might be teaching the child how waste management works. For this topic, you might use the question –> Where does our trash go when it leaves the house?

Asking a question is always my favorite part of the lesson, because it’s truly interesting to hear a child’s opinion. Often, their ideas are logical, and force you as the teacher to think about an idea a new way! But the key is . . . they often are not correct.

For my Lesson: Question –> Do plants move?

I started with asking this question, “Do plants move?” and I LOVED the responses my students gave. My older student in 1st grade was quick to say no. I asked her why to learn more. “Plants don’t move because they’re always in one place and they stay there.” She explained. She was right . . . plants do stay in one place, normally. “But what about the wish flowers?” I countered, they move. “Once we blow on them!”

This was super interesting to me, and lead to more discussion about whether a tree specifically moves. To further engage we could have gone on a tree hunt at this point in the lesson and found baby trees, medium trees and big trees, and considered why some trees are so small and some are really big.

2. Discover Something New

Immediately in the first few pages of the book, there is normally something that counters the child’s original theory or at least gives him or her more information about the topic. The teacher tip here is to identify a new discovery a child can make in the first few pages of the text and ask follow-up questions. Examples for this could be something as simple as in the text there is a line that gives new information, or maybe for the dumpster truck example there is a picture that shows a dump truck driving down the street but doesn’t mention the truck yet. This would be a great time to ask your child what he or she sees in the picture and how they think that might connect to trash. Can trucks carry trash? etc. Look at both the text and the pictures for a new discovery.

For my Lesson: Discovery through Text: “Plants don’t have feet or fins or wings, yet they can move in many ways. Look closely and you’ll discover that plants can’t sit still.”

After reading these opening lines of text, my older student was outraged. “That’s not true!” so announced. All they do is sit still. She was not convinced by text alone. We brainstormed reasons why the author might be saying that. What could the author mean? To get a better understanding of what we already knew about plants. Then we flipped the page with anticipation . . .

3. Read until you Finish the Text

Since the purpose of this lesson is to learn more about your child’s interests, I’d advise you to not spend too long on the text for this lesson and spend more time on the next step. Because of this, consider picking a short picture book that will only take you about 5-10 minutes to read. This way, once the text is done, your child is still energized and eager to learn more about this topic rather then tired from sitting in one place.

4. Turn the Book to Life

This is the essential step for this lesson. It’s about experiencing what is in the book! This will look a little different depending on the book you have selected and the topic of discovery. But the goal here is to give your child a better understanding of the text by bringing the text to life. For the truck dumpster book, this might mean visiting the local dump. For a book about bugs this might mean going outside and counting how many different types of bugs we can find outside. For a book about something more fantasy based, like fairies, this might take a little research on your part. I recently went on a family trip to ME where we visited a botanical garden with a fairy-garden designed for children that would be perfect to bring out that creative imaginary side. Often we think that that learning about an interest has to be about something real, but theres truth to even imagined things! At the fairy park you could talk to your child about why they think the park build the fairy-homes out of wood? What else could fairy homes be made out of? or why are there so many bright flowers planted? What kind of feeling do bright flowers bring out?

For my Lesson: Dandelion or Wish Flower?

For this portion of the lesson, we looked at both Dandelions and Wish Flowers and noted their similarities and differences. One thing we found, was that the leaves were actually the same for both flowers which was fascinating. Going back in the text, we noticed that the inner cover of the book actually showed us both the flowers we were looking at in greater detail. It appeared that the flowers both grew from the same seed, and in fact the dandelion actually turned into the wish flower. Woah! This was exciting because we learned that not only do plants not sit still, but actually plants can change appearances completely from one stage of their lives to another. Imagine if humans could do that! Nature is pretty cool. 🙂

As a reflection writing this now, I also realized that another really neat experiential portion of my lesson could have been to go to a sunflower farm. Last week was the end of sunflower season and one of the plants this book focused on was how plants start small and grow tall to reach for the warmth of the sun. This could have been another really cool investigation for this book!

In Conclusion, I hope the ideas from this post serve you well. Remember, you can use any book or any interest for these lessons, so you can easily plan from books and materials you already have at home!! These lessons can even be broken up into two parts to fit busy schedules, perhaps reading during the school week and the “Turn the Book to Life” part happening as a family activity on the weekends. The more connections you can help your child make between school tasks and real world life the better! Enjoy, and get creative 🙂