more seed learning

The rest of our seed week has been going swimmingly and I'm very impressed with how enthusiastic Finn is to begin in the mornings. After we take Elizabeth to school, we come home and straighten up the kitchen and living area so we'll have a tidy workspace. He's very helpful with the tidying, but he asks about 5 times when we can start our seed work!

Yesterday we decided to make a painting of 2 seeds buried in the earth. I drew and Finn colored the seeds with beeswax crayons. (He was a little timid to do the drawing himself.) Then we set up our wet-on-wet watercolor station and he watercolored the earth around the seeds.

He was skeptical at how he could make brown earth with only red, blue and yellow paint. He's talked about primary colors at school and the secondary color that each 2 primary colors makes. Now he knows how to make brown!

Today, Paulie and Philip stayed home with a cold/cough so we included them in our seed learning. We planted some seeds in a bag of earth.

Popcorn is a very easily sprouting seed so we each put a few seeds of popcorn in our bag.

Finn held the bag under the faucet to moisten the dirt. Now the boys are convinced we're going to have our own popcorn harvest this fall. I'm trying to convince them it's more about the process of watching the seeds turn into small plants!

The bag of dirt and popcorn seeds is now sitting in a place of honor on the window ledge over our nature table. We'll keep you posted on how it goes! (grows?)

After planting our popcorn seeds, each of the boys made a mosaic with about 10 kinds of beans and seeds.

Finn was so careful and particular about where he placed each bean. Paulie was the opposite and just dropped beans from above to see what kind of design they'd make.

Finn was so pleased with his finished mosaic. He asked if we could hang it on the "everything wall". :)

Finn decided the pumpkin seeds were more tasty to eat than use for artwork, so he ate the entire bowlful and asked for seconds. Silly boy!

Out of the entire seed/bean mosaic experience, I thought Philip captured the moment most wonderfully. He decided to make a wand with the word Lumos on top. He spelled it Lumus, which didn't diminish the sweet nature of the artwork, and I was so proud of how much time and energy he put into his work!

In all we've had a wonderful week experimenting with, playing with, reading about, planting and examining SEEDS!