Let it Grow!

by Aaron Abercrombie's Class

Introduction to our Garden

One of the signs of new life in spring is the growth of grass, leaves on trees, budding of flowers and the planting season.  It seems like advertisements for gardening supplies and greenhouses are never-ending!  In my class, I took advantage of this enthusiasm everyone seems to have for planting and shared it with the children.  I first introduced our garden by filling our water table with soil, adding some garden tools and garden gloves and allowing the children to explore, question and discuss.  It was a very exciting introduction and no one was afraid to get down and dirty!

Seed Dissections

The seed dissection was essentially a wonderful opportunity to compare and contrast an egg and a seed.  New life comes from both of these things and we had the opportunity to take apart and carefully observe both.  Just as in our egg dissections, the children were given a seed, magnifying glasses and paper to record their observations.  They were shown how to label with arrows and were given specific parts to find and draw.

Prior to the dissection I showed the children a package of lima beans that I bought from the store.  We looked at them and found them to be hard.  It would not be easy to get inside those seeds.  Then I showed the children some other lima beans that I had soaked in water over night.  These beans were about double the size of the dry ones and were soft.  I showed them that they would be able to take apart the seed by removing the seed coat.  Inside they would find an embryo and the tissue.  We talked about how the embryo was the baby plant, the tissue was the food for the baby plant, and the seed coat kept everything safe inside.

After the dissection, we talked about the hard seed again.  I posed the question: Do you think the baby plant would be able to get through this hard seed to grow?  After some debate, we decided that “no, it wouldn’t.”  So then I asked them how they thought the plant might get out of the seed.  Of course this led to another discussion about how plants need water to grow.  The water softens up the seed coat and allows the growing embryo to break through.

 Pole Beans

The first seeds we planted were pole beans.  These we planted in individual pots and placed by the window sill to grow.  In a few days the beans sprouted and before long, they were very, very tall.  We noticed that some of the beans were falling over because they were too tall.  These pole beans needed something for support!

In the classroom we built a “garden hideaway” out of bamboo poles.  The poles were supported in pails of soil and tied together with string.  We planted the beans in the soil and twisted them around the poles.

Over the course of a few weeks we watched the beans grow taller and taller and observed their ability to wrap themselves around the bamboo poles for support.

We didn’t’ have enough beans planted for the hideaway to completely fill in, and indoors was not the ideal place for this project but it was interesting to see how the plants used the poles to get the support they needed.  It was also interesting to grow such a tall plant.

Art Activity

An obvious objective of this study was for the children to be able to state that plants need water, light and soil to grow.  Water is certainly very important for plants and we discussed that outdoors, the water comes from rain falling.  Unfortunately, our plants inside could not benefit from this bit of nature so, in order to make our indoor garden feel more “at home,” we made some raindrops to hang in our classroom.

The outer part of the raindrops is blue construction paper.  Wax paper was glued to the center and children used pieces of tissue paper to decorate.  The tissue paper was fastened with watered down white glue.  We hung these beautiful raindrops from the ceiling and had fun pretending to get wet!

Planting Our Classroom Garden

After the children explored the soil for a few days, we began to prepare for planting.  First children used tools and their hands to level out the soil.  Next we looked at how many types of seeds we were going to be planting (4). 

We discussed how we might organize the seeds in the garden.  None of the children had gardening experience so we looked at some pictures in books and saw gardens planted in rows.  We discussed how that might keep the garden organized and help with weeding, and identification.  To make the rows we attached string to 2 craft sticks and stuck the sticks into the soil, one at each end of the garden.  It was along this string marker that we planted the seeds.

 Now that it was time to plant, we had to learn how!  Could we just throw the seeds on top?  Could we dig big holes down to the bottom?  Could we put the seeds right beside one another or do they need room?  We discovered that all these questions could be answered by reading the information on the seed package.  We learned how deep and how far apart each seed needed to be.  I made markings on craft sticks to show how deep the holes would need to be and then the children used the sticks as non-standard units of measurement to dig holes.  I used another stick to show how far apart each seed needed to be and the children used that too.  By reading different seed packages, we found out that different seeds have different requirements.  Why?  We discussed this question and the main consensus was that some plants were maybe bigger (some of the seeds were bigger too)!

 After planting all the seeds we had space for, we had to figure out what other requirements seeds need.  Many children knew right away that water and sun were necessary.  The water was no problem and we did that right away, but in our classroom without any significant windows, how would we get sun.  Take the garden outside, and move it to a place in the school with windows were suggested but I reminded them that we wanted the garden somewhere where we could watch it everyday.

I reminded the children of how we hatched our chick eggs.  The eggs did not have a hen to sit on them so we kept them warm with an incubator.  Similarly, we were going to give our plants warmth and light with a grow light.  We attached the light to a makeshift stand and plugged it in.

Then we waited!

Unfortunately our garden did not do too well.  The stems of the plants were not very strong and every time we watered, the little plants were pounded down into the soil.  They never really recovered and so our garden did not last as long as we would have liked.  We talked about why our garden did not grow as wonderfully as we wished.

Garden Journal

Many real-life gardeners keep journals recording things such as how they prepared the soil, what they planted, care given to the plants, and how the plants grew.  We also kept a garden journal of our plant’s development.  I began the journal with a calendar so that we could record major developments such as when we planted the seeds, when they sprouted and how often they were watered.  The pages following the calendar were for individual children to record observations and measurements.

The children used unifix cubes as non-standard units of measurement.  They stacked the cubes beside any seedling that they wished measure.  In the journal, they colored the correct number of boxes to show how tall the plant was and then drew a picture of the plant.  Children were required to record their name, the date, and the kind of plant they observed (they took this information off the seed package).

 Play Dough Garden for Fine Motor Development

Play dough is a fun sensory and fine motor material, especially when you use scented dough and provide objects for the children to stick in the play dough.  In this case I gave the children a bucket of silk flowers and allowed them to plant their own flower gardens in the play dough.  They enjoyed the activity and adults were able to talk to them about concepts such as front, behind, in, taller, and shorter.

Wiggly Wormery

The wiggly wormery was an idea I took from a book of children’s gardening projects.  For this project, I filled a plastic terrarium with layers of soil and sand.  The children also gathered some grass and leaves to spread on top.  I purchased a dozen earth worms from the fishing store and we put the worms inside the container.  It was important to keep the worms moist but not too wet, and cool.  We then had the chance to see the worms wiggle into the soil and mix up the layers.

The idea of this experiment was to discover what the purpose of the worms was.  We learned that they are not simply gross, slimy creatures.  They keep the soil from getting hard and they work the dead plant matter (grass and leaves) into the soil and this nourishes the plants.  Before putting the worms into their “wormery” the children had a chance to look at them up close, and some even carefully touched the long, slithering creatures!