Flower Sprouting by Robin Smith

We may not have had enough time to grow vegetables for our classroom, but we did decide to grow some flowers instead, and we had a fun time with it.  We decided to use Nasturtium and Sweet Peas, which we let the kids plant them in the flower pots themselves:

We used seed pots and the packets were purchased at Home Depot for $1 and $1.50 each seed packet depending on the flower.  They were ready to plant seeds so it wasn’t too complicated to do.  The seed planting pots were also purchased from Home Depot.  What we decided to do was create a chart, from the figure below, where students would have to estimate how long it would take the seeds to sprout.  Not only did this use their skills of estimation, we also taught the children how to plot a line graph.  Not only do they learn how to plant a seed and care for it, but simple math can be applied to the lesson as well.  It’s just a fun activity and all the kids are excited to see the results (just don’t leave them outside overnight as I did, as there supposed to be put inside at night because it’s too cold, so I hope I didn’t ruin there hopes and dreams).