Can You Ripen a Green Tomato? Let's Experiment!

Last week, a few of our pre-k students harvested the last of the tomatoes from our garden. They noticed that most of the tomatoes were still green. 

I asked the pre-k class these research questions:

How do we ripen green tomatoes?

There is an enzyme in tomatoes called ethylene, if the enzyme is released, the tomatoes will ripen. 

I asked, what do you think we could do to help release the ethylene?

The pre-k children had lots of ideas!

I think…

MT- Put them in the sunlight and water them.

DW- Leave them in the sunlight for ten months.

MH- We put them in water for eleven minutes and eleven days and then we just put them in the sunlight after we take them off of the tray.

MH- Why don’t we put them in sunlight and then water them after they are in sunlight?

EW- Put them in the sunlight over there (by the window) for sunlight and then put them in the box

LW- Put them in the sunlight in both front windows and then, put them in the back with less windows.

We set up a few control batches of the harvested tomatoes.

One control batch we washed, dried, and placed in paper then stored them in a cardboard box, away from sunlight. We also added one banana to the box.  I asked, why do you think I added a banana? EW “For a chemical reaction!” What makes you say that?! “You told us that, yesterday!”  

We then determined which window allows the most sunlight into the classroom; we place the other control batch in that window sill. I, of course, invited all of the children to have one green tomato on their table to observe over the course of our experiment. On day one, I asked them to put on their figurative science hats, goggles, and lab coats, and to document the date and to draw the current state of their tomato with much detail.

We will observe the control tomatoes over the next few weeks and let you know what we discover.

Patterns Everywhere!

Patterns! Patterns everywhere ... seasonal patterns, weather patterns, grammatical patterns, numerical patterns, even patterns in how we take turns on the playground. With careful monthly, weekly, daily, and even hourly observations, these pre-kers have on their science hats and they are looking for patterns. 

Within the last two weeks, the children have observed the chlorophyll beginning to fade away from our favorite maple tree that we visit on our observation walks. We discussed how this happens seasonally. What did it look like in summer? The children agreed, it was all green. More recently, some of the children noticed the top of the maple tree appeared more orange. What do you think is happening? Some children thought that maybe the tree was dying, others recognized that the chlorophyll was fading away from the leaves and the other pigments became more visible. We read about that in the book Why Do Leaves Change Color, by Betsy Maestro. We discussed that the leaves are dying and falling to the ground. When asked what do you think happens to the leaves? LW shared enthusiastically, I think they are rotting and becoming soil! Decomposing!

The children also look and listen for patterns in literature. 

 We see patterns in numbers through skip-counting, on the calendar, and we create complex patterns with materials such as cubes and Dominos. 

We think there are endless patterns in nature; patterns not only visually present in the structure of the plant, but also in the life-cycle. Seeds from these sunflowers have been harvested for spring planting.

 The children have been tracking and graphing weather, which helps us plan on what to wear for recess.

There are patterns in structures and in taking turns - your turn! My turn!  

These two are organizing the store and getting ready to sell the food they harvested.

Where else do you see patterns?