Many people overlook plants and their importance despite seeing them every day and even eating them every day. A good biology teacher, whether a parent teaching kids at home or a Montessori teacher in an eager classroom, can bring plants into exciting focus for students of biology. The new biology text by Pricilla Spears, Kingdoms of Life Connected, makes the job easy and fun, and is an excellent addition to any homeschooling science program.
The book details many projects that help children explore and understand plants, such as labeling nearby plants and keeping a file of plant images. Students will be fascinated by the history of plant discovery and will be eager to explore the many ways plants are used in their everyday lives. Edible plant families are likely to be a subject of interest that many teachers can use for topics beyond basic biology encompassing important issues in health and medicine. Children love to get practical experience of the plant world by growing their own vegetables in outdoor garden plots or inside the home or classroom.
One of the strong features of Kingdoms of Life Connected is that it guides both students and teachers through the less commonly known types of plants and places them in the context of broader networks of life. Interesting discussion of liverworts and hornworts and mosses can stimulte student interest in discovering other amazing plants they may never have thought about before. Show your students a picture of a quillwort or club moss and explain how it is related to the large, scaly barked tree “Lepidodendron” from the Paleozoic Era. And, suggest to your students that they refer to Kingdoms of Life Connected to discover what else was alive in paleozoic times.
This book’s high quality illustrations are an excellent complement to the text. The diagrams of relationships among the plants makes it easy for students to remember important elements of order in the diversity. There are many interesting tales to tell from the kingdom of plants. You will find the new text to be an excellent resource to make your lessons both accurate and interesting, whether you want to discuss the ginkgo tree as the last survivor of its lineage, or talk about monilophytes and pteridophytes.
Kingdoms of Life Connected is just one item in a growing catalog of science education products produced by Big Picture Science that are tailored specifically for elementary and middle school science teaching, whether in a homeschool setting, a Montessori or charter school classroom, or a traditional public school.
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