Monday, March 30, 2009
Sowing Seeds
When is the best time to engage children in the seed sowing process? With young children seeds can be started at your Science Center throughout the school year. Seed sowing should be thought of as an experimental process not as a task that succeeds or fails. If you provide soil and seeds children will naturally put the two together and the learning begins. Sowing seeds is the beginning of investigating the life cycle. Children learn early on that not every seed produces a sprout and there are many factors that influence this such as water, heat, light, soil, and disease as well as just the fact that some seeds don't grow. What is most important is that children are given the opportunity to be observers in the process and that they learn from every experience. At my Center we started cotton seeds in January. I provided fresh cotton bolls, the children pulled the seeds from the bolls, placed them in soil, under a grow light and on a heating mat and we now have several small cotton plants waiting to be placed outdoors in the garden. Who knew! Cotton does grow in Cleveland! In February we planted popcorn seeds. Yes, the seeds came from a bag of popcorn seeds purchased at the grocery store. Try it! March brought the sowing of kale and broccoli seeds in cell packs placed under a grow light. Many parents had questions about kale its taste and uses. Stay tuned for more photos, recipes and info regarding nature study in Early Childhood. Children learn much about seeds, plants, their environment and the life cycle of plants through seed sowing.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I involved my daughter in planting seeds in the garden while I was still carrying her around in a big blue sling. She's now 18, and has generalized to being my assistant beekeeper -- another agricultural endeavor.
ReplyDeleteI recommend reading the book "Seedfolks" to children, one chapter per session followed with discussion. Here's info from WikiPedia:
ReplyDelete"Seedfolks by Newberry Medalist writer Paul Fleischman is a 1997 children's book about the impromptu creation of a community garden in an inner-city Cleveland. As it comes alive, it breathes new life into an erstwhile sterile neighborhood. This book is not told from the perspective of a single character, but in a series of vignettes written from a first-person perspective of a very diverse group of characters. Some of the characters are young, some are old; some are new to America, some were born there. They all have their own reasons for coming to the garden and the significance it takes on for each of them is very different. They represent a variety of colors and cultures but come together to form a real community."
My four year old son just did a simple seed planting project at his preschool. The students decorated small plastic cups, filled them with soil and planted grass seed. They lined them all up in the classroom window and were thrilled to watch the grass grow as the weeks went on. He was so excited to bring his "plant" home and tell me all about the process. This simple idea has opened up his interest in seeds and planting and we are already making plans for some spring projects of our own!
ReplyDelete