Thursday 14th November 2024

Mulch To Do

Excuse the pun, but the children have been enjoying all the beautiful leaves around the school. We started by talking about signs of autumn and the youngest children observed that first leaves change colour and then they fall.  We also discussed the differences between plants and us (animals), one of which is that they make their own food.  The older children then used the word photosynthesis and the younger children helped explain that plants use sunlight and water through their leaves and roots to make their own food to grow in the spring and summer.  Everyone agreed that leaves are green when they are growing, but no-one knew that was because they make chlorophyll, so a new word was learnt.  Then, they told me that leaves turned yellow, orange and red.  I explained that once the chlorophyll was not being made, the other colours in the leaves were revealed.  The yellows were called flavonols, the orange were called carotenoids and the red were known as anthocyanins. They all worked out how a plant senses it is time to stop growing, because the days grow darker and colder, but they found out that a hormone is produced which makes abscisic acid and this is what makes the leaves fall off. The cold speeds up this process.  They then got active scooping up bucketfuls and wheelbarrowfuls of leaves to make mulch and I stood in the barrel to squash them all down.  They did amazing work, but there are still lots of leaves to clear, especially from our pond.