Tiny Seed, Big Change: How Living Things Grow
🎯 Today's mission briefing
We are learning that living things grow and change over their lives, and that babies grow up to be like their parents.
You'll know you've got it when:
- I can say that living things grow and change, and give three examples
- I can put the life stages of a plant or animal in the right order
- I can name what a seed needs to sprout — and explain why soil is not on the list
The pumpkin nobody planted
Connects to what your guest already knows and makes them curious. Activating prior knowledge is one of the strongest predictors of new learning.
A family in Queensland tipped their kitchen scraps onto the compost heap all summer — mango skins, pumpkin guts, the ends of the carrots. Then one morning in March, something was growing out of the heap. Big green leaves. Curly springy bits. And by winter, three fat pumpkins.
Nobody planted a pumpkin. Nobody watered it. So where on earth did a whole pumpkin plant come from? And how did something as small as a slippery little seed turn into a plant bigger than a dog?