Year 3 - What do plants need to survive?

After pondering this question, the Year 3 children decided that plants need water, air, space, soil and light.

How can we prove this?

In groups, the children had to devise a question to investigate which prove or disprove their theories.

Questions to investigate

Can plants survive with liquids other than water?

Would a plant survive in a material that’s not soil?

Does it matter what liquid you use to water a plant?

Next, they planned how they were going to carry out the investigation.

Finally, they had to decide what equipment / materials they needed.

They were very imaginative!

Alternative liquids - washing up liquid, shampoo, syrup, sparkling water, milk to name a few.

Alternatives to soil - thick honey, flour, salt, biscoff spread.

Before setting up their investigation, the children had to make a prediction and justify this prediction.

“I think that the plant in honey will grow the best because honey comes from bees and bees pollinate flowers.” Toby

Over the next week or so the children will feed their plants with their chosen liquids and observe what happens before making a conclusion from their findings.