Discovering Seeds and Germination

The little girls are in the middle of a science experiment. They are learning about seeds, germination and what it takes to make a seed germinate. We placed seeds in 5 different jars last Monday and are watching them to see what they will do and drawing out our results.

Jar 1 - Damp paper towel, 4 kidney beans, set on windowsill

Jar 2 - Damp paper towel, 4 kidney beans, in refrigerator (cold, no warmth)

Jar 3 - Dry paper towel, 4 kidney beans, on windowsill (no water)

Jar 4- Damp paper towel, 4 kidney beans, set on windowsill, steel wool in jar (steel wool is supposed to eat up the oxygen in the jar)

Jar 5 - Damp paper towel, 4 kidney beans, black construction paper around jar (no light)

The girls were very excited to see that "something is happening".....

God's Design provided us a chart to record our findings on, but knowing Peanut, I knew she would prefer to draw what she saw, rather than fill out a chart, so I drew some very crude jars and made copies of them to record on. Here she is contemplating what she sees.

In addition to watching what the seeds are up to, we soaked some kidney beans and some corn seeds over the weekend. Doing this allowed the girls to dissect the beans and see what the insides look like. Here Sweet Baby is peeling off the seed coat of the kidney bean.

Believe it or not, you could actually see the first little leaves inside the bean. It was really neat. Peanut is recording what she sees on a lapbook piece from the Hands of a Child Plants lapbook. I purchase lapbooks from them whenever they have one that will go along with what we are doing for history or science and when it fits with what we are talking about, we do a lapbook piece and put it all together in the end.