Planting Seeds (and a Winner!)

I will not lie to you friends, this week was HARD! We had 3 days of rain (ie inside recess) AND our Music teacher was out for 3 days so planning time got cut to 20 minutes. I don't know if its the pregnancy thing or what, but one 20 minute break from 8:30-4:00 just isn't enough any more!

Luckily, we had some good times with our Plant Life Cycle unit. I love teaching this unit since we most of my kiddos have very little experience with growing things. Most live in apartments or a trailer park, so gardening is not an activity they usually take part in. We started our unit by reading two books:


I love how well these two go together - and the personification of the seeds in The Tiny Seed makes reading the book aloud so much fun - the kids gasp and call out and there are many choruses of "Aww!" when a seed "dies".

Once we read the books, I showed the kids our little greenhouse and some seed packs I had purchased. The greenhouse has 36 peat pods, so I figured we'd plant use 12 each for 3 different seeds. Here's what it looks like:

We had a choice of 6 different seeds, so we did some quick internet research on each, then we voted. I don't know about your class, but in mine the kids always tend to vote together - so if little Johnny chooses Turnip all of his little buddies do the same, and the same with little Mary and her friends. It drives me up the wall for some reason (I want them all to be leaders, not followers - even in the instance of choosing seeds lol!). So, this time I turned our board around and called them behind it one-by-one for secret voting.


Surprisingly, most of the boys ended up picking the Forget-me-nots - I had totally thought they would go for the cantaloupe or turnips, but maybe they envision taking a flowering plant home to mama (after the seeds sprout we will be transplanting them to individual pots to take home).

Then it was time to plant our cantaloupes, turnips and forget-me-nots. The neatest thing was the difference in seed sizes:
 
Here are a few pics of little hands taking turns being gardeners (disclaimer, I do not garden much myself, so I just have them plant 3 seeds in each pod and cross my fingers that we get enough to sprout so that everyone has a plant to put in a pot later! Maggie from Maggie's Kinder Corner told me a great idea - plant  flower seeds, then go to your local nursery and purchase enough plants to replace the seedlings with - that way you can swap them out one Friday afternoon and the kids will be wowed on Monday to see how much their flowers have grown! This would be a perfect Mother's Day gift too!)


After planting we made predictions on which type of seeds would sprout first. We read each package to see the germination time table and then tried to make educated guesses from there. This was a tricky one for my kiddos - only 2 were able to really ignore which seed they had personally chosen and make a true prediction based on the germination info - the rest just chose the kind of seed they wanted to grow the most lol!


Once each pod had been planted, we replaced the cover and set it on our windowsill in the sun:


I absolutely love my windowsill - I try to keep green plants on it year round, along with our aquarium and crabitat!

Now that our seeds are planted, we can get to work on all the goodies in my new Plant Life Cycle pack! It has a labeling page, observation journal, KWL charts, life cycle pages, an easy reader and more! You can win a copy for your class by Rustling Up a Comment below! Just tell me what kind of seeds you plant in your classroom :)


And, the winner of the Chicken Life cycle pack was #8, Erin! Your pack is being emailed right now Erin, thanks for your comment!



14 comments:

ronnie said...

My class will be planting sunflower seeds this week. They are amazed at how tall the flowers grow. vhair61215@gmail.com

Krysti said...

Love the little greenhouse! We have to do it the old fashioned way - cups and soil!! I'm getting ready to do my plant unit, too. Our school just built a garden and our class is planting tomatoes!
krmart1@hotmail.com

Jennifer said...

Love the greenhouse! We had two rainy days too. Ugh- by day two I was ready to pull my hair out!

Rowdy in First Grade

alwayskindergarten said...

We have a garden bed in the yard just outside our classroom. We have planted peas and potatoes.
-Andrea
simmonsa1@sfusd.edu
cielobella@aol.com

Miss Squirrels said...

All of that planting looks like so much fun! I am going to have to switch rooms....NO WINDOWS!!!

And tell them Squirrels said you need a longer break! (I'll write you a note) :)
Squirrels
Going Nutty!
misssquirrels@yahoo.com

Unknown said...

PLant pack looks great..hope next week is sunny for you!
Jennifer
First Grade Blue SKies

Mrs. Brown said...

This looks great! We plant lima beans and grass seeds....thanks!

kellybrown28021@gmail.com

Amy said...

We are starting our 2 week plant unit tomorrow. We will be planting in cups to go home and around our K building. We will plant sunflowers and beans.
Amy
qbeepatte@hotmail.com

Amy said...

We are starting our 2 week plant unit tomorrow. We will be planting in cups to go home and around our K building. We will plant sunflowers and beans.
Amy
qbeepatte@hotmail.com

Erin said...

Oh yay! I'm so excited that I won that unit. I checked my e-mail just now and I didn't see anything. I'm wondering if it got sent or if it floating around internet space? :)

Erin
andeair@hotmail.com

Mrs. Lang's Literacy Corner said...

Love this idea! We love to plant flowers to give to our moms on Mother's Day.

pamlang24@yahoo.com

Rebecca Thompson said...

This year was my first year in kindergarten and our science curriculum doesn't have us doing anything specific with plants :( Next year I want to do your idea of planting a few in order to compare how different plants grow and just supplement our science standards with this unit!

Rebecca Thompson
thompsonr574@strose.edu

Teaching with Grace said...

Wow! I was going to plant lima beans but now I'm thinking about letting them make a choice of different seeds. I hope that I am the lucky one!

Jennifer
penniesforluck@gmail.com

Teaching with Grace

Unknown said...

Love your seeds activities! Just found your blog, I'm your newest follower!

✿Sue✿
Science for Kids Blog

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