The humble Celery

Want to know how to completely impress a 6 and 3 year old? Apparently you do it with celery. A few days ago, while chopping some for soup, I remembered the age old experiment where you place a stalk of celery in a glass of coloured water and watch as the leaves change colours.

So I pulled 2 glasses out, had them pick their colours and away we went. Wednesday is our home day. We get the most work done and usually it is a very productive day. So I told them Wednesday we would dissect them. “Ohhhh, what does that mean Mama?!” It means we get to cut them apart and figure out what happened I told them. Well if there is one thing my boys like it is taking things apart so they anxiously waited for the day.

We did our circle, our stories, we did Julien’s main lesson, we worked on our French, and we had a dance party for a bit and then they remembered my promise.

So out came the cutting boards and knives and we cut apart the celery. We saw the “tubes” and how the water travels up. We talked about our own bodies and how we also have “tubes” ( we did use proper terminology but they liked tubes better).  

We talked about how in a few months it will be sugaring season again and that the sap flows much the same way the water does in the celery and how the sun turns the sap into food for the tree. We pulled out the ribs and felt how they were flexible, but strong. We hacked them to bits and examined every square inch of them. All the while all I kept think was, wow who knew celery was so exciting.

It went from a very simple thing into a day long discussion of plants and trees and how they grow. Which lead to the importance of trees and how they breath in the air we breath out and how we breath in the air they breath out and how very important it is to have them around. Which lead to discussion about our environment and how we must care for it and what it would be like to live in a place without such beauty surrounding us and how very, very lucky we are. All of this from some celery. It a great homeschooling day, because really it doesn’t get much better that learning, not by teaching, but by your own discovery. The questions kept coming and the information wasn’t just going in to be memorized, it was going in and being digested because of curiosity. It was a great day, all from a humble stalk of celery. I wonder what other produce I have in there that we can use tomorrow?