'From Seed to Plant' - Read and Rise April 2021

This week we noticed new flowers growing in our yard - dandelions and wild violets! I know a lot of people just consider them weeds, but Lil C, Squidgy, and I love watching them pop up in the yard, sprinkling it with beautiful bits of color! Lil C is eagerly waiting for the white clovers to bloom because those seem to be the most popular with our wild bees. Next week we will explore wildflowers and pollinators a bit more, but I thought we should first learn how these plants grow. 

Featured story: "From Seed to Plant" by Gail Gibbons

Activity: Explore seeds! There are so many ways to do this. If you have dandelions around, pick one or two fully bloomed ones and pull the flower apart. You and your children will be able to see that below the yellow petals are the white fluffy seeds! After the yellow petals die and fall off, the seed flower blooms and waits for the wind, animals, or you to spread them!

We are lucky to have a pair of giant maple trees in our yard and in the spring they sprinkle spinning seeds ALL OVER. This allows us to find seeds in many stages of growth all around the yard! We collected a bunch and tried to line them up in order of growth. 

Take a walk around your yard, your block, or a local park and see what kind of seeds you can find.

Finally, you can grow your own plants! I have two fun ideas for this. 

First, check out this video from SciShow Kids called Grow Your Own Plants. The video will lead you through the steps to set up your own experiment to find out what plants need to grow.

Or if you want to see the seed sprouting in action, check out our Beans in a Jar experiment!