So, we decided to homeschool next year. I'm beginning to understand that it's not so much "follow this textbook, this cirriculum, these rules" as much as it is teaching your kids how to learn, and taking advantage of learning opportunities as they present themselves.
One Sunday, Little Bit and I were outside on our porch, playing with the maple seeds. I was showing her how the helicopters fly and just sort of segued into seeds, and how there are all sorts of seeds. We talked about maple seeds, and dandelion seeds, and came inside and ate an apple after seeing apple seeds.
We talked about how to make a plant grow, you need a seed, dirt, water, and light. There was even a real cute little video story that we watched, that I would provide a link to.... if I had bookmarked it.
Then we planted some greenbean seeds. 4 to be exact. We planted one with a seed, dirt, water, and light. Then one we wrapped in a damp paper towel, but it didn't have dirt. One didn't get water, and one didn't get light.
First, we had to move our rainbow maker out of the window sill. This makes beautiful rainbows around 9:30 in the morning.
You should have seen the excitement when we realized the seeds were poking up. This is the seed that had dirt, water, light, and of course a seed. This is about 8:30 or so that morning.
Little better picture of the same seed. At one point, I came into the kitchen to cook, and found dirt in the sink. I had to laugh just a bit, because this plant was making a mess! ;)
I feel really sorry for this one. It didn't get any light. And I may have over watered it. It just looks sad.
But imagine my surprise when I realized the one that didn't get water had a root showing? You can see it to the right of the pink sticky note label, near the bottom of the glass. I didn't get a picture, but it wound itself all around the bottom of the glass.
This is the one that didn't get "dirt." We wrapped it in a damp towel and kept it moist.
Can you see it poking up through the towel there?
This picture isn't too clear, but those are the roots of the "no dirt" seed poking out.
So, this is our first plant at about 10 pm that same night. OH MY WORD, it's growing and growing fast!
Here's the one in the towel that same night. It grew too!
And the next morning, we had LEAVES! (And more dirt in the sink, but I digress.)
This guy even managed to poke his head up.
All in all, I think this experiment was a rousing success. Although I'm a bit hard pressed to tell you who was more excited by the growing seeds: me or the kids.
The next thing we did was to take the seed in the paper towel and open it up and talk about the parts of plants: roots, stems, leaves, flowers, and seeds. Then we planted them all outside. Hopefully soon, I'll have some pictures of greenbean plants to show you. :D
Oh, and a lady in my guild gave me two baby baby tomato plants that we're "growing." Hopefully, Little Bit will be excited about these, too.
Hugs,
Melinda
