Spring Planting

Helping kids learn about seeds and how they grow is a great lesson!  Kids can get their hands dirty, see the start of the project and how the seed is very tiny, help the seeds grow by watering it and also watch as the seeds grow.

Supplies Needed:

• water bottle
• scissors
• grass seed
• dirt
• water

1)  Cut the water bottle in half.  Be sure to recycle the extra half!

2)  Let the kids shovel dirt into the bottom half of the water bottle.

3)  Fill up the lid of the water bottle about half or 3/4 of the way with grass seed.

4)  Let the kids plant their seeds.  We had some just dump the seeds in and others that put them in one at a time.

5)  Water the seeds.

Our seeds take 7 days to grow.  We not only talked about how plants grow and different signs of spring but also the number 7.  The kids helped clean up the mess and we also talked about recycling the part of the water bottle that we don't need anymore.

After our plants grow we will update this page with a picture of how it turned out.  We are planning on dressing up our containers with some burlap and easy decorations too that can be glued on.

Update 

Day 7:  Nothing.  (I didn't even show the kids...I didn't want them to be sad!)  However, our very warm temps in Minnesota for the month of March turned more towards normal temps and got back to the 30's and 40's most of the time.  I did have our containers outside and I brought them in on day 7 since they were probably too cold.  

Day 8:  1 piece of grass has started growing in one of the containers.  I showed the kids.  Not sure if they could really even see it.  :)

Day 9:  There is grass in every single container now.  It is growing!  It is still very small but I can see it.  Bringing it inside must have helped.  I have also been watering these every day with just some sprinkles of water and also put plastic sandwich bags over them to help keep that humidity level increased a little bit.

About 2 weeks later:  the kids will be trimming their grass!  Most of the grass has started to grow and we even have some that are very long and are growing out of their container.  We will be getting out the kid friendly scissors soon so the kids can trim their plants.