OBJECTIVE

Students will be able to measure the height of vegetables in the garden

Students will be able to notice that different plants grow to different heights

ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS

What helps plants grow?

How do plants change over time?

MATERIALS NEEDED

Large easel paper with question “How many cubes tall are our plants?”
Markers
Unifix cubes
Watering cans

PROCEDURE

The best time to do this lesson is a few weeks after planting in the garden.

Introduction
Observe the garden with the students and discuss how the weather and plants have changed since first planting the garden. What has helped them grow? What may have been challenging for the plants?Tell the students that we are going to measure them and take care of them so they can continue to grow.
Demonstrate how to hold a stack of unifix cubes up to the something so that the cubes and the thing you are trying to measure are even. Demonstrate the cubes being too tall, the plant being too tall and then both being the same height. Once the cubes and plant are the same height, you can count the cubes to find out how many cubes tall the plant is.

Activity
Hand out unifix cubes and have students work together to measure various plants in the garden or continue as a whole group. Encourage students to measure other things in the garden such as height of the garden bed, scarecrow, bench, etc.

Wrap up/Assessment
Gather again as a whole group. Record on the chart paper: how many cubes tall was the tallest plant? How tall was it? The shortest? What’s the tallest thing in the garden?

Water the garden or weed to help the plants continue to grow.

FOLLOW UP & EXTENSIONS

• Check with teachers to see if you can leave a box of cubes in the garden space so students can measure in the garden whenever they’d like

• Every time you are in the garden, have students measure the plants and keep track on the chart how many cubes tall the plants are

• Measure the width of plants in the garden