Seeds

I am going to use some of the themes from ‘Exploring Nature with Children’ to inspire me and give me some more ideas of things that I can do with the children. Obviously, some of the activities are aimed at older children, so I will be explaining how I’ve adapted them to suit littlies and how they will meet the EYFS. Some of the topics we’ll probably miss, such as the night ones.

This week is seed week. I wasn’t sure how engaged the children would be but actually, we all enjoyed it more than I expected.

I cut up an apple for their snack and then used the pips from the apple as the ‘hook’. We read Eric Carle’s The Tiny Seed which Betty quite enjoyed but the younger ones got bored with which wasn’t a great start! We went into the garden to look for seeds. Again, Betty was interested but the younger ones were quickly distracted by a muddy puddle.

Our next activity was much more successful. I had bought some cress seeds so we put some toilet paper into empty yoghurt pots and sprinkled water onto it. Then we sprinkled the cress seeds in. All of the children really enjoyed this and were engaged. We put napkins into jars, wet them and put runner beans into the jars. We talked about how seeds need water and sunlight to grow. They are now on the windowsill – hopefully, they’ll grow!

We went for a walk around the village looking for seeds. The younger children were much more interested in the seeds now and we got quite a haul! They were absolutely fascinated by the seed pods and asked me to break open a couple to see all of the tiny seeds inside. And our conversation about seed dispersal and animals pooping out seeds was greeted with much hilarity.

I have seen some other lovely activities on Pinterest that, if I’d been a bit more organised, looked like fun, including seed sorting and seed art.

EYFS:

We spent a lot of time talking about the seeds, where they are found and what they are for. This supports children’s communication and language development and helps their understanding of the world. I extended this for Betty by teaching her vocabulary such as seed pod, pips, burrs, burst and drifts.

We compared the different sizes of the seeds and the talked about the amount of seeds promoting numeracy development.

We read The Tiny Seed, developing literacy skills.

Picking up the seeds and sprinkling them meant that children needed to use their fine motor skills, supporting their physical development.