Biospheres are the new Pot Plants! STEM Activity
The enthusiasm for potted plants populating the floor spaces of our houses has, in recent years, been increasing at a rapid rate.
The trend has been embraced in large part by millennials. Some report having hundreds of pot plants inside their house!
One reason for the rise is the calming effects of greenery in our environment.
The feelings of wellbeing from being amongst greenery have coined a name in Japanese culture ‘shinrin-yoku’, which translates to ‘forest bathing’.
Some academics have studied shinrin-yoku as a natural therapy on mental health. They found indications that shinrin-yoku could be used as an effective way of relieving short-term effects of mental health symptoms, including anxiety. There’s a link to their article in the ‘further resources’ section below.
‘But what do house plants have to do with STEM activities and STEM careers?’ we hear you ask.
House plants with a twist of STEM education
Rather than heading to your local plant store and parting with a decent chunk of cash to bring some nature under your roof, we’ve found an activity for you from our curated selection of Teaching Resources on the Primary + STEM website.
The bonus of the activity is that it can be done by the whole family, and is a great way to build curiosity about ecology in your children, which may spark interest in many career pathways including Policy Advisors, Ecological Consultants, Science Communication, and careers in Conservation and Environmental Management.
An activity to do at home
The activity we’ve identified to build curiosity about ecology, with the bonus of bringing house plants into your living room, is Bottle Biospheres.
Bottle Biosphere was developed by a team at the Northern Arizona University.
In the introduction to the activity, we learn that a biosphere is a sealed system. Or as National Geographic defines it, “The biosphere is made up of the parts of Earth where life exists. The biosphere extends from the deepest root systems of trees to the dark environment of ocean trenches, to lush rain forests and high mountaintops.”
Cramming the whole of earth into a pot for your living room isn’t going to work, but the idea of a sealed system can be replicated by creating a mini biosphere in a bottle.
The activity sheet for Bottle Biospheres will tell you everything you need, but here’s a quick overview:
- a plastic bottle
- soil
- water
- fine aquarium gravel, sand, and/or potting soil
- foraged plant material
- pen and paper for designing your bottle biosphere
The instructions for the activity also remind us not to put fish, frogs, or reptiles inside our bottle biosphere… because the bottle is too small to support their life. But snails and earthworms seem to be ok.
The activity sheet details how to add all the ingredients into your bottle to create your biosphere.
Somewhat amusingly, the instruction sheet lets us know that once we’ve loaded everything inside our bottle and sealed it up, we should ‘hope for the best.’
No doubt the snail and earthworm are thinking the same thing!
If you create your own Bottle Biosphere, we’d love to see pictures of what you create. You can send images through to primaryandstem@gmail.com along with any advice for other biosphere makers for sharing on the website.
Info for teachers
This resource has students thinking about the work done by Ecologists, through designing and building their own ecosystem. The resource can also be used to connect with the Digital Technologies subject by having students keep a log and record every day what happens inside their own ecosystem.
This activity has been mapped to the Victorian curriculum, learning area: F-10: Design and Technologies; curriculum code: Design & Technologies > Levels 5 and 6 > Technologies and Society > VCDSTS033
Further resources
The Bottle Biosphere activity can be found here.
Kotera, Y., Richardson, M. & Sheffield, D. (2022) Effects of Shinrin-Yoku (Forest Bathing) and Nature Therapy on Mental Health: a Systematic Review and Meta-analysis. International Journal of Mental Health Addiction, 20, 337-361. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11469-020-00363-4
Image credit