This project allows students from all over the world to plant either daffodil or tulip bulbs together and collect data. The students who participate in this project will all plant the bulbs during the week of November 11th-18th. Data is recorded on the growth of the flowers. Since people in different parts of the world live at different lattitudes and longitudes, it is a great opportunity to discuss the growth of the plants in the different environments. There is a place for students to post the weather they experience, and even upload student drawings of the environment around them. This project would be a great way for my students to make the connection between environmental factors and plant growth. There are even discussion questions for the students to explore such as why the Dutch tulip farmers remove the bloom from the plant.
This project aligns with many different disciplines in our fourth grade curriculum. This project fits in nicely with my fourth grade Eco-Scouts Unit in which we explore many aspects of the environment including weather, plant growth, and interdependence among ecosystems. This would also be a great project to help our school become a “Green School”. Because the project discuses the latitude and longitude of different places, it would also tie into our social studies curriculum on geography and Maryland. Many students could also use this project with our Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) Fair which is held each year. They could experiment with a few groups of the tulips or daffodils and manipulate the environment in which the tulip grows to see if things such as sugar could enhance the growth of the flower. Our technology objectives could be fulfilled as students use digital cameras to photograph their flowers, databases to record and analyze growth patterns, and then display results using a webpage. This is a great use of technoogy, and would not be nearly as effective without it. Due to the fact that students in this project are from different parts of the world like Australia, it is much more convienient to communiate electronically rather than through traditional mail methods. For one, time is a factor. The progress of the tulips should be documented in as close to real time as possible. Computers make sending photos and communicating with others a better alternative to traditional methods.
The project is open to the needs of your class. You take from it, what you need. It runs for a year so you can decide how long you wish to participate. I predict that my class would participate in the project from November to the end of the year so that we could see the full cycle of the flowers.