Experimenting with Seeds

Adriana has been really picking with her food lately. So, what does a teacher mom do? She looks for answers at the library, hahah! I found this great read aloud in the children's section - "Grow Your Own" by Esther Hall. It gave her an extra push to try foods that she typically does not want to try right away. 

 What it also did was create a very curious little toddler, asking how plants grew over, and over, and over again. Every mom's dream...I know! We talked about how plants need a seed, some soil, water, and lots of sunlight. The booked helped with all its illustrations of course, but I thought a hands-on experiment would do the trick!

I took out an almost empty sauce bottle I had at home and washed it clean. I cut a small piece off of a sponge and took out a few black beans and chickpeas from the cupboard (refer to imagines below).

I then explained to Adriana that the glass bottle will be our little garden. We will pretend the sponge is our soil and the seeds are the beans. She took all the "seeds" and placed them in the glass bottle. With help she soaked up the sponge with some water and tossed that into the bottle. Last but not least, we found a place for the bottle by the window, so that the "seeds" get lots of sunlight. This will be our science experiment for the next couple of weeks. We will observe the changes to the beans and talk about them. Building onto our language skills through conversations and onto our fine motor skills through various writing and drawing opportunities to document our results. Wish us luck! If you do try this at home, let us know how it goes! Keep in mind that not every experiment goes the way we plan it and that's okay! We will just talk about what went wrong and how we could do the experiment differently the next time.

Materials we needed: old sauce bottle (clean),
a small piece off of a large sponge to fit inside your bottle, and
some dried beans your have in your cupboard  (we used black beans and chickpeas)

First, add all your "seeds" into the bottle.

Fact: we are practicing fine motor skills by  placing each dry bean into the bottle.

Then, soak up your sponge in water and squeeze it into the bottle.
Lastly, don't forget to find a lovely place in the window so your beans get lots of sunshine!