Seeds for Science

The past week, during our home school preschool time (aka Ivan and Adelia's afternoon nap) Lincoln and I have been doing science experiments with seeds. We are getting really excited about the fact that our new house will have good sized, raised, planter boxes for a garden, and have been anxious to get started with that. Lincoln and Ivan have caught on to the excitement as well, and so I decided to try an revolve this week's activities around seeds.

Monday- First of all, I wanted to start with an explanation of what spring is. We made this cool seasons wheel by taking an empty Cheerio box and cutting a large circle out of it. Then we divided the circle into four parts, one for each season. Then I printed out pictures of things I thought resembled spring off of the internet and let Lincoln cut them out and glue them onto our seasons wheel, while we talked about what spring is. For now, I've decided to leave the other seasons blank, until we get to them, and then we'll fill those in too. I made sure to make a point that one of the things you do in spring is to begin planting the seeds to grow a garden.

Then for FHE we went to Home Depot and picked out the seeds we wanted to try planting this year. We came away with snow peas, green peppers, onions, green beans, regular peas, corn, carrots, and watermelon. We bought some little indoor plant starter containers, and soil. Eventually we'll probably go back and get some tomato and strawberry starts, we'll see. We didn't have enough time left before bed to plant the seeds though.

Tuesday- Since we hadn't planted our seeds yet, I decided it was the perfect opportunity to do some seed sorting with Linc. I opened the packets for watermelon, peas, beans, and corn, and dumped all the seeds into a bowl together (I chose those because they were big enough and different enough to tell them apart). I printed out pictures of the different full grown plants with the fruit on them. Linc and I examined the seeds and made guesses about which seeds might go to which plants. He got peas and corn right. After we determined which went with which I spread out four different bowls and put one plant picture next to each, and let Linc sort the seeds into the bowls. He had a great time, and kept asking to do it again once he finished.

Wednesday- Today we did an experiment with bean seeds. I took a few of the bean seeds out of the packet and gave them to Lincoln, along with three different glass jars. I told him to put the beans into the glass jars however he wanted as long as there were some seeds in each jar. While he did that, I took a piece of paper and drew the three jars (obviously, I'm not the artist in the family). Then we labeled the jars 1,2,3. Then we counted the number of beans in each jar and drew them in the jars on the paper. Then we decided to find out which jar had the most beans in it. On the back of our paper I made a graph. Each bean got it's own box, and we made sure the boxes for each jar lined up, so when we were done we could see which jar had the most beans. Lincoln actually had a pretty hard time with this when it was just the beans. So I assigned each jar a different color, and we colored in the squares for each bean. Then we turned the paper sideways and I asked Linc which tower was the tallest. After that he could pick it out. I don't know if he understand that each block in the tower stood for one bean, but that'll come eventually. Right now I'm more concerned with him understanding the concept of more and most, bigger biggest, small and smallest, etc.

The we put all the beans back in their respective jars. We talked about what seeds need to grow, and one of the things we came up with was water. In the first jar we didn't put any water. In the second jar we put a half inch of water, and the third jar we filled half full of water. Then we colored the amounts of water in each jar onto our paper drawing. We'll have to wait 8-10 days to see which jar will sprout the beans. Lincoln loves coming into the kitchen to check on it every second of the day. :) I hope it works. (It's supposed to be the middle jar.)

That night we finally got around to planting our seeds. We let the boys use spoons to scoop the dirt into the little holder things. Then we each took one child and very carefully helped them plant the seeds. And last, we watered them. The boys thought the watering was great fun. Ivan even tried to help by using his sippy. :)

Thursday- Co-op Preschool day! It was Suzy's turn, and the lesson she chose to teach fit right in with what we'd been talking about all week...seeds!

It was a beautiful day, and she took us all out back and we talked about seeds and what they need to grow. Then she gave each kid an egg carton with three sections in it. She let them put dirt in them, and then they each got to choose three types of seeds to plant. Ivan chose onion, green pepper, and tomato. Lincoln (who I was not supervising, so he was pretty much on his own), I think chose a tomato, lettuce, and something that will be a surprise when it comes up (in other words, I have no idea). Then the kids got to water their seeds. Suzy did a great job of explaining how to know when the seeds needed more water, and when they'd gotten too much water.

Friday- One more experiment with bean seeds. It's very similar to the one we did Wed. except on Wed the focus was on what seeds need to grow, and today's the focus was on the roots and how the seeds sprout. We took three plastic baby food containers with the lids and Lincoln crumpled up enough paper towels to fill the containers and put them in. Then with a medicine dropper, he got all the paper towels damp. (Thoroughly soaked through, but without puddling at the bottom of the container.) Then we "planted" a seed between the wall of the container and the paper towel. (So you could see the seed through the side.) Then we put the lids on and put the containers in a dark place. They are supposed to sprout in a few days, and as we watch them we'll be able to see the roots, and we can talk about roots and what the roots do for the plant. Cool!

I should probably mention that I did not come up with these activities in my own head. :) The only one I can claim is the graph for the bean seeds. Everything else I got out of the book Science is Simple Over 250 Activities for Preschoolers by Peggy Ashbrook.

Oh ya, and some supplemental things we've done this week to go along with all of the above.

-read books about spring and seeds

-gone on a spring walk to look for signs of spring (buds on trees, flowers pushing up through the ground, snow melting, birds coming back, etc.)

-pointed out on rainy days that the rain was good because it was water the ground and helping the plants to wake up.

-Talk about the different things we eat at dinner that have seeds.

-And I wanted to eat some different seeds, but we never got around to that.