Science - Seeds

Because of all the yard and garden work we've been doing around here it seemed timely to spend a week studying seeds and how they grow for our science lessons. This tied nicely into our Story of the World theme as well because they periodically include lessons on ancient agriculture (we discussed ancient agriculture once before when we learned how Nomads began farming and we built the Shaduf as an early irrigation system).

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Here the girls are looking at about half a dozen different types of seeds and disscussing the similarities and differences between them. Due to a science experiment that will appear in a different post, we were specifically looking at the coats of each seed and how hard or soft they were.

Just for fun, we planted some sunflowers and tomatoes from some kits we had received (from Grammy I think). I'm not sure about the purpose of these tiny pots as the plants are already exploding out of them less than a week later!

 After reading "The Carrot Seed" we went outside to see how our own carrots were doing. After a week in the ground they were beginning to surface.

 The corn was beginning to pop out of the ground as well

 These are the three books which prompted our week long lesson on seeds. The first was a suggested reading from Story of the World (it's too much for the girls but I find it helpful to read as background knowledge to discuss with them as is appropriate and fits into our other lessons). The second was a random library pick by Kennedy but fit perfectly into our science theme (especially since we had just planted carrot seeds in our garden). The third was a book I selected to enhance their learning and a bit more on the girl's level than "Ancient Agriculture."