What is a better way to kick off the Spring season than doing hands-on plant activities? I love starting my Spring unit with a deep dive into all things plants. One of my favorite ways to incorporate science, literacy, and writing all into one is having my Kinders make these engaging plant lapbooks! Lapbooks are a great way to keep all of their learning in one organized place. It’s also a great project to share with families to showcase their child’s learning throughout the unit! These plant activities will have your students digging in with excitement.
What are Plant Lapbooks?
A plant lapbook is a great hands-on way for students to learn about a topic using many different types of plant activities and keeping them in one place.
I find lapbooks to be a great way to teach about plants in my classroom. One file folder per student is all that is needed to get started. Instead of trying to keep year-long notebooks, we focus on individual topics. With younger students, they are so much easier to manage. And . . . the students love creating a “book” with all of their learning.
Prepping Plant Lapbooks
At first, prepping a spring-themed lapbook may seem a little intimidating, but I promise it is as easy as 1, 2, 3!
- Open the file folder and lay flat horizontally
- Using the center crease as your guide, fold one side in until it meets the center crease
- Fold the other side in to meet the center crease
That’s it! Open, fold, fold! At the beginning of the year, I set up the folders for my students. But . . . as the year goes on we do it together. It’s a great way to get in some following directions practice.
Plant Activities for a Spring Lapbook
Plant lapbooks allow you to explore Spring from a science perspective, which is important. We weave in math and language skills along the way to have a great cross-curricular unit of study. To help my students explore plants, we added 8 plant activities to our lapbook. It’s the perfect way to get students excited and ready to learn all about plants!
Plant Lapbook Activity 1: KWL
One of my favorite ways to start every weekly theme is to see what prior knowledge my students have about the weekly theme. I believe it is one of the best plant activities for the beginning of the unit. A quick and easy way to do this is to create a KWL chart. I print out the Plant KWL Lapbook flap. Under the first flap, students will record things they already know about plants. Then they will think about what they want to learn during our theme or questions they may have about plants and record that under the middle flap.
Once they have finished their first two flaps, I love creating a class anchor chart to see what they already know and what they are wondering about plants. Students will share what they wrote under each flap as I record their responses on a class anchor chart. I like to hang up this anchor chart at the front of the room to help guide our learning throughout the week.
I always add all responses to the anchor chart, even if they are not completely accurate. I also keep these anchor charts up all week long and refer back to them throughout the unit. When we learn a fact that is listed on the chart, we will put a star beside it. If we learn a fact that contradicts something on the chart, we will just draw a simple line through the fact and move it to a “misconceptions” box on our chart and talk about why it is not an accurate fact.
At the end of our Plant Unit, we come back to these flaps and anchor charts to record interesting facts that we have learned throughout the week through our plant activities. It is always fun to see which facts the kids remembered and stuck with them. I will record their responses on the last column of my chart as they write fun facts they learned during the week under their last flap. This is a great way to show their families what they learned about plants during the week.
Plant Lapbook Activity #2: Can/Have/Need
Lapbooks are a great way for students to make their own mini anchor charts. One of our favorite anchor charts is a can/have/need chart. This is a great way for students to break down important facts and roles or plants. If your students are not able to write these things, they can draw a picture under each flap.
Under the first flap, students will think about all of the important things that a plant can do such as grow and make food, and record these under the first flap. Students will then share some of their responses to add to a class anchor chart.
The middle flap will have the students thinking of all the different parts of a plant, and what a plant has. Students will list the parts of a plant, or draw pictures of the parts, under the flap. We will then work as a class to see how many parts we can name to add to our class anchor chart. I wonder how many parts your class can name!
The final flap is for all the things a plant needs to grow. Students will think about what helps a plant grow and list or draw as many as they can under the flap. Once they list everything they can think of, you can add their ideas to the class anchor chart and see how many ideas they can come up with.
I love having the class anchor chart posted throughout the entire week. This allows for you and your students to come back and add to it throughout the week as you read various stories and your kids learn more about plants. Keep these anchor charts going all week long!
Plant Lapbook Activity #3 Label a Flower
When creating a lapbook, labeling is a must! My students always love labeling and I try and incorporate it into as many activities across the curriculum as I can! So I take full advantage of putting them in as many lapbooks as I can!
This is a great introduction to the plant vocabulary! Students are given different words naming the parts of a plant. They must match the word on the strip to the correct part of the flower. For example, the word “petals,” would be placed at the top of the flower diagram beside the petals.
When they finish labeling, they will have a flower with all of the parts labeled. Then coloring the flower is always a must. This is a must-have when planning plant activities for your science unit.
Plant Lapbook Activity #4 Plant Life Cycle
Sequencing is an important skill to learn in Kindergarten and what better way to practice sequencing than to create a life cycle of a plant? This is a great activity to talk to students about how things can grow and change. And. . . the life cycle is one of those plant activities that you just can’t skip.
Students will look at the pictures of the plant in all of the different life cycle stages. They will need to glue them in order from the seed to a grown plant. After the flap is assembled, this is a great way to talk about how a plant looks different and changes at each stage of its growth.
Plant Lapbook Activity #5 Plant Needs
Another of the important skills to teach in any plant unit is what plants need to grow. A flipbook is a perfect activity for students to showcase the different needs of a plant to grow.
Students will cut out each page in the flipbook and stack them in size order to make the plant flipbook. On each flap, students will draw a picture of a different thing, such as sunlight, soil, air, and water, to show what plants need.
This is a great resource to refer back to throughout the unit, especially if you are planting a seed and watching it grow! Your students can make sure it has everything it needs to properly grow.
Plant Lapbook Activity #6 Seed Observation Log
Hands-on science is so important, especially at this young age. Students love planting seeds and getting to watch the seeds sprout and grow! I love watching them come in every day and run to check on their seed and how amazed they are at every change that happens.
A great way to record and document the changes a growth that occur is in this seed observation log. Students will draw a picture and write the changes that they see as the seed grows.
This is a great tool for students to go back and look through to remember what the seed looked like at the beginning and see how the seed changes over time until it becomes a full-grown plant.
Plant Lapbook Activity #7 Plant Vocabulary
Building Vocabulary is such an important skill to teach in Kindergarten. Young students are like little sponges and love to soak up all they can, especially when you tell them “big, fancy” words. If you want students to learn and discuss a theme or topic, you need to provide them with the vocabulary and language to use. Learning the vocabulary allows you to use it when teaching and completing other plant activities.
In this activity, I give students 5 vocabulary words about plants. I let students tell me what they think each word means. Then we break the word down, discuss the meaning of the word, and come up with our definitions in our own words. As a class, we will look at the definitions and match them to the correct plant-themed word.
We will also keep referring back to these words throughout the week so they can hear them and get as many exposures to the word as possible. We will play vocabulary word games with the words and look for the words in other activities, such as stories, throughout the week.
Plant Lapbook Activity #8 Plant Types
When using winter lapbooks, I do my best to maximize space so that my students can complete multiple activities around a theme. One way I always do this is by adding a class graphing activity to the back of their folders.
This fun winter class graph asks students to answer the question “Do you like to play in the snow?”. This is a great opportunity to get your students up and moving around. As students walk around the classroom polling their classmates they learn how to collect data and keep a tally chart. Then we work on analyzing data and creating a bar graph.
Once everyone is done with their polling, we come back together as a class to discuss our results.
Explore Plant Activities With Your Students
Whether you choose to explore plants with your students using a lapbook or individual plant activities, I hope you’ve found lots of ideas you can use. If you are looking to save time, I’ve pulled all my plant lapbook ideas into one ready-to-use packet. You will get all the activities above, and more, that are ready to use with your students. You can find the Plant Lapbook Activities in my store on Teachers Pay Teacher.
Need Digital Plant Activities Too?
Are you loving these plant activities but need them to be digital instead? Or maybe you want to incorporate technology into your in-person lessons too. No worries at all, I got you covered.
This plant lapbook is also digital! I love incorporating the digital version into my daily in-class lessons. It is a great way to introduce each piece of the lapbook as a whole class so your students are ready and prepared to create their individual books. Use the digital version to begin your lessons each day, then have students work on their lapbooks.
Maybe you are teaching virtually and you need all the activities to be digital! This digital version is a great fit too! You can screen share and work on some slides as a whole group. Then simply assign some slides to your students through Google Slides for them to explore plants individually or with their families.
Save these Plant Activities
Save these plant activities to your favorite classroom Pinterest board. That way you can quickly get back to them when you are ready to explore winter with your students!
