science for tinies: sprouting seeds

[psocoptera]

(We did this a couple of weeks ago, posting for my own records.)

Project: Sprouting Seeds
Materials: chard, pea, and lettuce seeds, ziploc bags, paper towels, water
Explanatory details: Everyone knows this one, right? Paper towel in bag, add water, seeds between one side of the bag and the paper towel, press, hang on a bulletin board or similar, wait for seeds to sprout.
How did it go: Good. I liked doing it with a couple of kinds of seeds at once to show how seeds come in different shapes and sizes.
Things we talked about: We set up the bags at the same time as we planted most of our seeds in pots. We talked about how what we could see happening in the bag is the same as what the seeds were doing in the dirt - growing a little tiny leaf up, which we could see in the pots, and growing a white root down, which we can't see because it's under the dirt.
What Junie got out of it: She liked playing in the dirt to plant seeds, but her real favorite part is watering them with the watering can. She was interested in looking at the bags. There are a lot of ways we could elaborate on this next year - bags with different conditions, turning them to watch the growth reorient, etc.

Comments

[ruthling.livejournal.com]

that explains something I saw in a classroom a month or so ago. They had the little baggies posted on a corkboard. I'd never seen it before.

I kind of wish I'd tried it with the chard seeds I planted, then I would have known that what I thought were chard sprouts were actually weeds.

[psocoptera.livejournal.com]

If you get the kind with red stems, the sprouts are red from the beginning, which is handy for telling.