How do seeds travel?

We’ve been planting a garden. I am a terrible gardener, so we’re starting from seedlings I bought at the store. Since we have been studying plants with My Father’s World for our science lessons, and I want the kids to know plants don’t just come in a little pot from the store, we learned how seeds travel.

(I was given a copy of Planting the Wild Garden (affiliate link, and there are more in here) by Blue Slip Media to review, and it couldn’t have come at a better time.)

And before you ask, yes you NEED to dress as a pirate to plant your garden.

It’s a necessity.

And wear your shirt backwards.

Our inspiration book for this seeds lesson: Planting the Wild Garden

Planting the Wild Garden is a story about how seeds are spread and it follows all of the different ways seeds move. Now that we have a dog who functions as a living gilly suit and picks up everything he walks by I really understand the bit about animals moving seeds around.

I loved the simplicity of this story and the pictures.  They reminded me of the Jan Brett style with pictures within pictures, but more calming.  It’s watercolor instead of acrylics, so the colors aren’t as bright, but they are so very calming.

Before reading it we had gone on our annual bluebonnet hike to find a good place to take pictures.  There’s not really any yet.  We need a good day of rain and then no rain for a while to get some. It did give us an opportunity to…

Examining flowers to learn how their seeds move

We got a great chance to examine some flowers and try to look for their seeds.  We didn’t get to see the seeds yet, but we saw where the seeds would be. Indian Paintbrush and Bluebonnets are both plants that rely on the brightness of their flowers to lure in innocent bees and wildlife to spread the seeds and to pollinate them.

After reading the book we talked about all the different ways seeds are strewn about, and I remembered this picture from an earlier walk. We talked about the dandelion seeds being strewn by the wind, and how a good breeze will blow the seeds away. Of course, we had to try it out with as many dandelions we could find.

[Future Ticia here, another part you could talk about is how animals will eat the plants and then poop out the seeds. If you have a decent nature preserve near you, going for a walk in the nature preserve is a great way to look for that example. It’s in the book, but at the time I didn’t think to take the kids to do that.]

It was a great talk about how seeds are grown.

So, all in all I think this book makes a great addition to anybody’s spring plant study.  I look forward to reading this book over and over again.

Some more early learning science

• How does a tree grow?
• What happens to my shadow as the sun moves?
• Farm animal toy sort