Teacher: Kathryn Loveday
Dates for 4-week course:
April 27 – May 22, 2026
Times for Live Sessions: Monday through Thursday at 9:15am MT, and Friday at 9:15am MT for student group meetings. Each session lasts between 35 and 55 minutes.
Course Description
Following the fourth-grade study of the animal kingdom, the fifth grader now takes up the study of the plant kingdom: botany. Students combine personal observations and teacher-led information to delve into the human relationship to the plant world.
We start by noticing the main parts of a plant: roots, stems, leaves, and flowers. The students learn about the variety of roots that plants have, and the different parts of stems, leaves, and flowers. We also discover that not every plant has all of these parts. This leads us to a discussion of what a plant is. We explore the functions of the parts of a plant and observe them in our local environment. We then investigate the relationship between insects and flowers. Lastly, we learn about the different plant families, starting with the simplest ones (mosses and ferns) and working our way up to the more complicated flowering plants.
Topics covered:
- The plant as a Child of the Sun and Earth
- The life cycle of a plant and the relationship to seasons of the year
- Parts of a plant
- How a flower forms
- The Plant Families: Algae and Seaweed, Lichens, Mosses, Grasses and ferns
- Flowering Plants, Lily and Rose families, Insects and flowers
- Trees: Conifers, Deciduous
- Biomes of the Earth and their flora
