How to Explain to Children How Trees and Plants Grow

Fill your child's curious mind with facts about how plants and tress grow.

Instructions

1. Plant seeds. Plant flowers, vegetables and herbs and trees to show your child most plants start as seeds.

2. Water your plants together. Explain to your child how the water is absorbed by the roots. Have one plant that you do not water so your child will see how plants need water to grow.

3. Explain how plants need sunlight to grow. Have one plant that is in a shaded or dark room. Observe the growth, or lack of growth, with your child. Ask your child why they think the plant is not growing.

4. Buy a plant with several fairly large leaves and place it in a sunny spot. Cover one leaf with black construction paper, one leaf with white notebook paper, one leaf with an unsealed plastic bag and one leaf untouched.

5. Observe the plant every day. Discuss what happens to the leaves, reinforcing the concept that the leaves must have some sunlight to survive.

6. Discuss the differences in growth between the leaf with white notebook paper, the leaf with the plastic bag and the untouched leaf.

7. Introduce photosynthesis. Explain how the plants uses the water and minerals from the soil in combination with sunlight to create food. Compare how a plant uses food to how a human or animal uses food to grow.

Tips & Warnings

• Check out the related eHows for information on where plants come from and why they are green.

• Print out the mold terrarium experiment from the related sites to show your child how mold grows.

• Buy a white flowering plant and add blue food coloring to the water every time you water the plant. Eventually the flower will turn blue and will reinforce the concept of the water traveling from the roots to every part of the plant.

• Buy books at your child's level and read about plant growth.