Exploring Seeds

Autumn harvest. The perfect opportunity to take your children to pumpkin patches, apple orchards, and berry fields so they may see first hand where their food comes from. The domino effect of food in our lives is overwhelming. What you put into your body influences pretty much everything else either directly or indirectly, and these sort of first hand experiences can be a great way to help children understand this important building block of good health and wellness.

Beyond field trips, there is also hands-on exploration that can be done at home. Today LittleMan and I studied seeds and laid the foundation for what we will be working on the rest of the week.
For today’s work we picked up 8 seed packets on clearance for 5c each and a package of 8 small, clear containers for $1. The rest of our supplies we already had on hand: colored pencils, clipboard, note cards small dishes, toilet paper, magnifying glass, work tray, tweezers, Sharpie marker, scissors, etc..
Before getting started I wrote in highlighter the name of each type of seed we had onto a note card.

The first thing LittleMan did was find a seed packet and a note card with the same word written on them. He told me the sound of each letter in that word and we together read the name of the seed. He then clipped the note card to his clipboard and traced the word as best he could. Afterwards he flipped the note card over and drew a picture of the seed’s plant (based on the picture he saw on the front of the seed packet).

After he had finished both sides of the note card, we cut open the seed pack and poured the seeds out onto a tray. LittleMan observed the seeds with his magnifying glass, he felt their texture with his hands.

Using tweezers he moved a few seeds into the small clear container and a few more onto a damp piece of toilet paper. This was LittleMan’s first experience with tweezers and I was very impressed with how easily he was able to handle them. I don’t know why I waited so long to let him try!

I was also pleased to see LittleMan taking it upon himself to guess how many seeds there were in the tray and counting to see if he was right. His estimation skills need all the practice they can get.

I sealed up the small clear container and marked it with a number, then I marked that same number onto the back of the seed packet (these will make an appearance again later in the week).

The left over seeds were poured into a large empty bowl and put aside while we repeated the same process, starting with matching the note card to the seed packet, all over again. We did this 8 times until each seed packet was completed.
Once we finished I left it up to LittleMan what he wanted to do with the large bowl of mixed left-over seeds. I thought perhaps he might like to do a sorting activity but he instead asked if he could preform a float/sink experiment so I backed off and let him do just that. He thought almost all of the large seeds would sink so he was quite surprised to find the cucumber seeds floating.