Arizona homeschooling keeps growing. Empowerment Scholarship Accounts now fund 108,688 students, and many parents are swapping curriculum and comparing notes on what to teach, 13 News (KOLD) reported on Oct. 19, with more curriculum swaps planned in Pinetop in November and Surprise in December. If you're looking for science your kids can touch, try this desert story.
In the 1890s, Robert Forbes planted 295 olive trees at the University of Arizona to find out whether they could survive the dry climate, according to the University of Arizona Campus Arboretum. Olive trees line John E. Rogers Way and Park Avenue on the Tucson campus, and the arboretum describes harvests where students and volunteers picked the olives so they could be pressed into oil.
That was a real science experiment, and it worked. This fall, your kids can run their own version: what makes an olive tree tough enough for Arizona, and can a short branch grow into a whole new tree?
What your kids will learn
Grades K–5
- Some plants can grow from a piece of another plant, not only from seeds
- The jobs of stems, leaves and roots
- How to observe, measure and draw a plant's changes over time
- How to care for a living thing with water, light and patience
Grades 6–12
- Asexual propagation: why a cutting grows into a genetic copy of its parent tree
- How rooting hormones (auxins) help a stem form new roots
- Planning a fair test and controlling variables
- Recording observations and data in a science journal
This week's activity: the Desert Leaf Challenge
Why do some plants handle Arizona's dry air better than others? Find out with leaves you can get this week. You'll need a few tough leaves (olive leaves if there's an olive tree in your yard or neighborhood, or a sprig of rosemary from the kitchen), a few soft leaves (lettuce or spinach), two paper plates, a magnifying glass and a notebook. A kitchen scale is a bonus.
- Predict. Ask kids: which leaf will dry out first, the tough one or the soft one? Write it down.
- Look closely. Use the magnifying glass to compare both leaves. Olive leaves are narrow with a silvery underside. Rub each leaf gently: which one feels waxy or leathery?
- Weigh or trace. If you have a scale, weigh each group of leaves. If not, trace each leaf's outline on paper.
- Set them out. Put each group on its own plate, side by side in the same sunny spot indoors or on a shaded patio.
- Check at 2, 6 and 24 hours. Record curling, wilting and color. Weigh again or compare to your tracings.
- Explain. Talk about adaptations: small leaves, waxy coatings and fine hairs help desert-tough plants hold on to water. Older kids can calculate the percent of weight each leaf lost.
Now for the big question: can a small bare branch grow into a whole olive tree? Our Olive Tree Cutting Rooting Science Kit includes one olive tree cutting about 4 inches long, rooting powder and step-by-step rooting instructions. Curriculum and worksheets for your child's grade band are emailed after purchase, so you can print them at home.
Want a true side-by-side experiment? The add-on option includes a second olive cutting, two 3-inch peat moss pots and two different types of soil, so kids can compare how each cutting does, plus extra instructions for planting once roots appear. It's a ready-made fair test, just like Forbes ran on a much bigger scale.
Join the growing community
Every kit comes with an invitation to our Facebook group, Aardvark's Seed Planting For Little Hands, where kids and parents get support with anything they need. Post photos of your cutting, cheer when the first roots show up, and ask questions along the way.
Young growers from Tucson to the Valley to the high country are part of it, alongside families in West Virginia and Arkansas running their own plant experiments this fall.
Start your olive experiment
- Olive Tree Cutting Rooting Science Kit – Grow an Olive Tree from a Cutting, with Curriculum & Worksheets: $19.00 for the kit, or $29.00 with 2 pots, an extra cutting and 2 growing mediums. Choose Grades K–5 or Grades 6–12 at checkout.
Arizona's olive trees started as an experiment. Your kids' could too.
