Kid Botanists

2003 The newspaper in Louisville Kentucky featured an article about a 4th-grade classroom that had turned into a laboratory of botanists.

For three weeks, the kids - wearing lab coats - were led down a path of botanical discovery by their student-teacher named Bill Stangel.

"In the first week, the children collected and studied leaves and looked at plant parts under a microscope.

In week two, they dipped carnations into water [mixed] with food coloring to see the petals change colors. They made guesses about how long it would take for the color to reach the petals, and they discussed how water and nutrients move from the roots to the leaves.

... At the end of the class, the children stood up and sang [to the tune of “Head Shoulders Knees and Toes”] “Stigma, petal, stem, and roots … stem and roots”