Seed in Winter
Although the Seed Saving module is ideally taught in the fall, when
seeds in the garden are plentiful, there are many indoor activities that
worked well for winter lessons when it was too cold to go outside, and
there wasn’t much to do in the garden. Seed activities provided many
opportunities for math, technology, science, and engineering.
After learning about the plant life cycle using the plant life cycle cards and a "Seed to Seed" game, we made these......
Using white pots, found at Oregon's Constant Gardener, each student drew
a face with a different expression on the four sides of the pot using
colored pencils. Permanent markers would work, but I found that regular
markers smeared off easily. You could also use clear plastic cups with
holes poked in the bottom and cut and paste faces- that way roots would
be visible too. I chose a shade mix for the grass since there isn't much
light in the classroom. If it is a large group it helps to have more
than one bucket of soil for filling the pots so there is less down time.
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Testing out engineering and design skills, we also did the Build a Seed activity.
We did this after running to the garden for a tasting, and used up some
energy acting out seed dispersal methods by imagining we were seeds
floating through the air, exploding out of pods, rolling and hopping,
and being eaten by animals. It is important to leave enough time for
this activity. Students were so immersed in trying to improve upon their
design it was hard to get them to leave at the end of the day!
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Another day we did a Seed Dissection, checked the results of our Germination Test, and made a
Seed Collage.
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Minimalistic Turtle
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Using the A Trip Inside a Bean Seed page, we examined the
outer coating of a soaked bean seed and broke the seed open to look for
the first leaves and embryonic root. We then each opened our baggie of
seeds in damp napkins that we had started spouting the week before. This was a great opportunity for mental math, using
multiplication to figure out how many bean seeds total in the group
(each student had five seeds per baggie), and then addition to see how
many seeds in the bunch did not sprout. We then explored the many shapes
and colors of seeds to make a seed collage.
Keeping the germination test seeds going is a fun way to see root
development. There was a student who had missed a session and when we
went to look at her beans a week later everyone was very excited to see
how much had changed!
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There were many opportunities to use technology to research seeds. With
my older group of students, we did a "scavenger hunt" for Around the World Seeds. Working
together, students looked up the origins of seeds and their dispersal
method. I had sunflower seeds, plain and spiced pumpkin seeds, and
coconut to taste when they found the answer! Air-popped popcorn is also a
popular and exciting treat.
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Reading Together
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Our last session was particularly successful in using all aspects of
STEM. This was the beginning of February, so it was finally time to
plant peas in the garden! We planted both snow peas and snap peas, and
started the session using the internet to look up the varieties and see
how they are different from each other. The younger group of students
did an "image search", where the older group read their descriptions out
loud.
We then went to the garden, fluffed the soil in the bed we would be
building our cloche, took the soil temperature and talked about why
temperature is important for seeds. A previous group had built
mini-greenhouses over individual plants, so we looked at the incredible
difference in growth of the plants that were protected over winter vs.
the ones that were not.
We discussed design and spacing of the supports and put the supports in.
We then did mental math to figure out how many seeds were needed to
plant two rows, based on the spacing suggested on the packages and the
length of the bed, and how many seeds each student would get to split
them equally. They then counted out the seeds and planted them before
covering the bed with reemay, and were very proud of the finished
product!
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Some other fun activities that are great for rainy days....
Here,
we had long pieces of paper, various seed packages, seed catalogs, tape
measures and colored pencils. The students each picked a seed pack,
looked up the seed variety in the catalog, taped the seed underneath the
soil line, and used the tape measure to draw their plant to scale. I
picked a few exceptionally tall varieties of sunflowers, pole beans and
corn (like the Kong sunflower in this picture, which is 12 feet tall and
almost didn't fit in the paper!) along with some root crops, broccoli
and tomato plants. This was a great demonstration of how amazing it is
that one tiny seed can produce an entire plant!
Another day we did a Mystery Drawing, to do a subtle test to see how
much students had retained about seed dispersal from two weeks before. I
drew a line down the middle and more going across so every student got
their own large square. Every student created their own garden, that had
a sun, two people, a few insects, three different vegetable plants, a
hose or watering can, fruit tree, and so on, and included at least one
seed dispersal method. It's hard to see in the picture on the right, but
when I asked one of my youngest students to tell me about her picture,
she ended her explanation with "and those are the rolling seeds, and
that is a flying seed!"
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