Plants are all around us, and essential to life on earth. Take this opportunity to look closely and discover what's really going on inside all those flowers, trees, fruits, and veggies.
Explore how stems function to bring water and food to plants with this simple color-changing celery experiment. Check your experiment at regular intervals and draw or chart your observations. By making predictions, coming up with a hypothesis, conducting the experiment, recording results, and drawing conclusions, you will also be practicing the scientific method!
Create a terrarium or plant fast-growing seeds in a pot or cup. Observe, measure, and monitor your plant growth over time. Are the leaves or shoots leaning toward the sunlight? Which direction are the roots growing? If the leaves start to wilt or turn yellow, what about the environment might your plant be responding to? You might need to fine tune the amount of light, water, and air circulation your plant gets in order to keep it thriving, which is a great hands-on learning opportunity!
Go on a leaf-gathering walk around your 
neighborhood or a local park, and try to find as many differently shaped leaves as possible. The Arbor Day Foundation's What Tree Is That? website will help you easily identify what kind of tree it came from. Talk about why you think leaves might have different shapes. Would a broad, flat leaf collect more sunlight than a thin, spiky one? Would a thin, spiky leaf hold up better than a broad, flat leaf in high wind, rain, or snow? You can use what you collected for lots of other fun, hands-on leaf activities incorporating art, math, science, and more.
From Seed to Plant
Published in 1991
Explores the intricate relationship between seeds and the plants which they produce.
Experiment with a Plant's Roots.
Published in 2015
Roots help keep plants alive. They take in water and minerals. But do you know how much of a plant is made up of its roots? Or whether roots always grow down? Let's experiment to find out! Learn more about plants in the Plant Experiments series.
Plants Can't Sit Still
Published in 2016
Describes some ways in which plants can move, from sunflowers turning towards sunlight and vines creeping up a fence to tulips folding in at night and maple seeds whirling like helicopters in the wind.
Plant Adaptations.
Published in 2013
Early readers examine how plants differ because of the adaptations they make.
How Do Apples Grow?
Published in 1992
Describes the life cycle of an apple from its initial appearance as a spring bud to that point in time when it becomes a fully ripe fruit.
Why Do Leaves Change Color?
Published in 1994
Explains how leaves change their colors in autumn and then separate from the tree as the tree prepares for winter.
Pick, Pull, Snap!
Where Once a Flower Bloomed
Published in 2003
Describes how raspberries, peanuts, corn, and other foods are produced as various plants flower, create seeds, and finally bear fruit.
Flowers
Published in 2014
"Flowers carry out a vital job for all flowering plants, they enable plants to reproduce. This book provides readers with a complete and comprehensive understanding of the role of flowers, their structure and how they are brilliantly designed to do this job. Clear diagrams, engaging text, and stunning photographs are used to explain the parts of a flowering plant, the parts of a flower, how different flowers are pollinated, how seeds are made, how flowers become fruit, how flowers vary, and our relationship with flowers. A wide range of examples present readers with flowers they will be familiar with plus spectacular and unusual examples from around the world. These demonstrate what flowers have in common and some incredible adaptations that allow plants to attract different pollinators and to survive in different conditions and habitats. Two simple activities help stimulate thought, reinforce learning, and bring the concepts to life."-- Provided by publisher.
Leaves
Published in 2014
"Leaves carry out a vital job for all flowering plants, they enable plants to make food. This book provides readers with a complete and comprehensive understanding of the role of leaves, their structure and how they are brilliantly designed to do this job. Clear diagrams, engaging text, and stunning photographs are used to explain what leaves are for, photosynthesis and how leaves work, the role they play in the movement of water around the plant, how shapes and styles of leaves vary, and why leaves are so important to us. A wide range of examples present readers with leaves they will be familiar with plus spectacular and unusual examples from around the world. These demonstrate what leaves have in common and some incredible adaptations that allow plants to survive in different conditions and habitats. Two simple experiments help stimulate thought, reinforce learning, and bring the concepts to life."-- Provided by publisher.
Roots
Published in 2014
"Roots carry out vital jobs for all flowering plants, they collect water and nutrients and help to hold plants in place. This book provides readers with a complete and comprehensive understanding of the role of roots, their structure and how they are brilliantly designed to do these jobs. Clear diagrams, engaging text, and stunning photographs are used to explain how strong roots can be, how they work, what happens inside a root, how some roots can be used to store food, how new roots are formed and grow, root variation, and our relationship with roots. A wide range of examples present readers with roots they will be familiar with plus spectacular and unusual examples from around the world. These demonstrate what roots have in common and some incredible adaptations that allow plants to survive in different conditions and habitats. Two simple experiments help stimulate thought, reinforce learning, and bring the concepts to life."-- Provided by publisher.
Seeds and Fruit
Published in 2014
"Seeds and fruits carry out vital jobs for all flowering plants. New plants are created from seeds and fruits help to protect and spread those seeds. This book provides readers with a complete and comprehensive understanding of the role of seeds and fruit, their structure and how they are brilliantly designed to do these jobs. Clear diagrams, engaging text, and stunning photographs are used to explain the huge variation in seeds and fruits, what seeds and fruit are for, the parts of a flowering plant, how seeds are made, what's inside a seed, what seeds need to germinate, different types of fruit, methods plants use to disperse seeds, and our relationship with seeds and fruits. A wide range of examples present readers with seeds and fruit they will be familiar with plus spectacular and unusual examples from around the world. These demonstrate what different seeds and fruit have in common and some incredible seed and fruit adaptations that allow plants to survive in different conditions and habitats. Two simple activities help stimulate thought, reinforce learning, and bring the concepts to life."-- Provided by publisher.
Stems and Trunks
Published in 2014
"Stems carry out vital jobs for all flowering plants, they hold plants up and carry water and food around each plant. This book provides readers with a complete and comprehensive understanding of the role of stems, their structure and how they are brilliantly designed to do these jobs. Clear diagrams, engaging text, and stunning photographs are used to explain the huge variation between stems from blades of grass to tree trunks, how stems work, what happens inside a stem, how stems form, why bendy stems and stiff stems can give plants different advantages, plants with underground stems that store food, stems that grow sideways and why, and our relationship with stems. A wide range of examples present readers with stems they will be familiar with plus spectacular and unusual examples from around the world. These demonstrate what stems have in common and some incredible stem adaptations that allow plants to survive in different conditions and habitats. Two simple experiments help stimulate thought, reinforce learning, and bring the concepts to life."-- Provided by publisher.
What Will Grow?
Published in 2017
"Seeds can be big or small, round or pointy, and all sorts of colors. They can become flowers, trees, fruits, or vegetables, and they grow all times of year, during spring, summer, fall, and winter. But all seeds have one thing in common--inside each is a new plant life waiting to emerge. What kind of plant will bloom? Wait and see what will grow! This jacketed companion picture book to What Will Hatch? features all kinds of seeds, from flowers and trees to fruits and vegetables. Along with lyrical text and beautiful illustrations, the book includes four pull-out gate-folds and fascinating back matter about plants!"-- Provided by publisher.
