Activity overview
Science topics:
Living things and their habitats , Plants , Seasonal changes
Spark a conversation with this time-lapse video showing a group of trees changing over one year. This activity is great for describing observations and applying ideas in unfamiliar contexts.
Run the activity
1. You’re going to watch a short video. The aim isn't to find right answers, it's to explore ideas and find out what they know.
- Do they know what might happen based on the image?
2. After you've watched the video, lead a discussion with your class:
- Which seasons can they see in the video?
- What changes do they notice during the film?
- What plants can they see?
- How do they change?
3. Ask the class to describe what they saw using only one word.
Top Tips:
How to run What's Going On? activitiesBackground science
Have a look at this BBC content on spring weather and seasonal changes.
Take it further
Take the children out exploring across the year with spotter sheets so they can see the changes that are happening in their local environment. Can the children find any daffodils in summer? You could take a photograph of the class in front of the same deciduous tree at different times of the year and display the photos. How does the tree change across the year?
The Woodland Trust have some great videos of different species of trees changing over the year.
This video shows you how to track a plant's response to light in the classroom. Set up a timelapse with your class to record 15 minutes of a plant's light response.
Image credit:
Sarah Fraser63 via Flickr
Video credit:
One year in 40 seconds by Eirik Solheim via Vimeo CC0