Parts of a Plant We Eat

Eight food cards fill this 2nd grade page in two columns. Each shows a vegetable in color on the left and three part chips on the right, every chip with a small icon: seed, flower, roots, stem, leaf or fruit. The child circles the part of the plant that we eat. The sheet shown runs a stick of celery, a radish, an ear of corn in its husk, a head of lettuce, a carrot, an eggplant, a cauliflower and a spinach leaf, so roots and leaves come up twice each and stem, seed, fruit and flower once each.

Most children know these foods and have never thought of them as plant parts. Circling the part turns a lunchbox into a science lesson: the carrot is a root, celery is a stem, the cauliflower is a head of flowers that have not opened yet. The eggplant is the card to talk about, because in the kitchen it is a vegetable and on the plant it is a fruit, the part that holds the seeds. The corn card asks for the kernels, the seeds we eat, and its chips offer seed, stem and roots, so the husk around it does not muddy the choice.

One sheet, eight foods, eight circles. The icons repeat the shapes from the base diagram, so children who have done that page have a visual reminder of each part. Bring in a few real vegetables and sort them by part as a class; roots and leaves are easy to find, flowers less so. The functions face, which asks what each part does, is the natural next step, and the base page is the one to do first.