Plant takeaway

Activity overview

Run the activity

This activity has been co-created with the Eden Project as part of Explorify’s collaboration with Science and Discovery Centres.

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:

• What would we be without if we didn’t have plants?
• Did anything disappear that you didn’t think came from plants?
• Why did the window disappear?
• Would anything be left?

3. Ask the class to describe what they saw using only one word.

Background science

Animals depend on plants to survive.  Taking plants away from the world would certainly result in more than the inconvenience  for humans of not having materials such as wood, paper, string, rope, perfume, cotton for clothes, and many medicines.  There would be barely anything left for us, or our farm animals and pets, to eat – not to mention the oxygen we need to breathe. 

Plants use sunlight, carbon dioxide and water to make energy which they store as sugars (glucose) in their leaves, stems, roots, seeds, flowers, and fruits; in other words, the parts that we, and other animals, eat.  This process, called photosynthesis, also produces oxygen.  Without plants, there would be no oxygen and no food.

The animals that don’t eat only plants eat the animals that do.  It’s easier to tell that some foods come from plants (broccoli, oranges, rhubarb) than others like coffee, honey, or processed foods such as biscuits and spaghetti. 

Then there’s fuel.  The world is still heavily reliant on fossil fuels (coal, oil, and natural gas) sourced from long-dead plants and animals, and even the biofuel alternatives are produced from plants.  The colour of your clothes may well come from a plant-dye; the glue you lick when you stick a stamp on an envelope is probably plant-based; and, if your house has a thatched roof, that’s a plant too.  Even if we could survive in a world without plants, it would be a much duller place for all our senses.  Plants are believed to be beneficial to our mental health: from a vase of flowers to what the Japanese call ‘forest bathing’ or Shinrin-yoku.

Even if humans were able to establish a base on the Moon, or Mars, plants would still need to be cultivated for food and medicinal use.  Perhaps the question should be, would plants continue to survive on Earth if humans were taken away?

Watch out for...

Some children may think that trees are not plants, and that spaghetti and biscuits have nothing to do with plants either.  They may not even consider that vegetables are plants. 

This does not need to be corrected during the session, but you can pick it up later.

Take it further

Activities

Kew has produced three lessons that teach children why plants matter in our daily lives for food, shelter, medicine and wellbeing along with instructions on how to create a plant museum.

Children could make a list or drawing of their home or classroom contents before and after everything sourced from plants has been removed. Here’s an information sheet from the RHS about plants in our daily lives that will help with this.

Or you could take an exciting virtual tour of the Eden Project here.

If you are in the area, consider visiting Eden for an educational experience that will connect your pupils with nature in an immersive and unforgettable way.

Linked Explorify activities - our recommendations:

Zoom In, Zoom Out  Healthy skin  Consider the everyday orange, the most cultivated fruit tree in the world.

Zoom In, Zoom Out  Green texture  Look closely at the needles of a pine tree, often brought indoors at Christmas.

Mystery Bag  Branching out  Put together a collection of objects made from trees.

What’s Going On?  Fantastic fibres  This film shows paper being made in two different ways, from papyrus and from wood pulp.

What if?  What if we did not plant trees?  An opportunity for children to learn about the climate challenge and take positive action on a small school.

Watch

This short film from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization ‘Can you imagine a world without plants?’ covers the main points quickly and simply.

Cross-curricular

Here’s an indoor or outdoor den-building activity using natural materials from the Eden Project.

Children could make posters, short films or drama presentations or simply write about the importance of plants in our lives.