Our new Year 3 plants songs have just gone live

Given the recent weather and the snow some of our gardens have seen, we are delighted to release our latest series of songs as part of our plants unit in year 3.

Chances are your backyard has on a bit of go slow growing season given all of the snow gardens in England have seen. But don't be fooled, a lot of science is at work beneath the surface. This period of dormancy, where plants are ticking over but not growing, comes with the falling temperatures and reduced day length that winter brings. Even though some countries in the southern hemisphere don't experience the long, harsh winters of the northern hemisphere, your lawn might have stopped growing, leaves are falling off deciduous trees and some seeds are weeks or months away from germinating.

But this dormancy is much more than a period of suspending animation. It's part survival mechanism, part housekeeping exercise, all meant to help plants gear up for warmer days ahead. Seeds lie dormant, metabolising at low levels, waiting for spring.

It's only when a seed has been exposed to low temperatures for long enough, a process known as cold stratification, that plant hormones trigger the end of dormancy. At this time, if environmental conditions are favourable — say there's enough water around — the seed can then germinate, again a process governed by plant hormones.