Week 3 — The Drinking Machine
“How does a plant drink without any soil?”
Monday Mission
Hook video (1:01) + discussion + class task — “Root-Cam Watch”
Prep: print Prediction Slips (1 pg) · 4 min · 20 min total
Daily Ritual
Measure and watch the water · 5 min
Main Block (Wed)
“The Celery Test: Watching Water Travel” · 33 min
Prep: 1 printable, cups from kit · 5 min
Friday Recap
Predictions resolved + graph moment + parent note
Printables (3)
Teacher notes
Read 2 minutes before Monday. The hidden star this week is the root. Students can finally see the part of the plant that does the drinking, because our unit has no soil to hide it. The big ideas: roots are the plant's straws; our water is more than water because we mix in nutrients; and the dropping reservoir is direct evidence that the plants are drinking. Wednesday's celery test makes water transport visible and needs a short head start, so set it up early in the lesson and read it again the next day. Keep tying everything back to the unit: the celery shows what is happening inside our own plants' stems right now.