The Seeds Have Sprouted!

Wow! They were planted only 4 days ago. Last week, I started some seeds in a glass container for the children at my friend's preschool. You can read about it in A Science project for the Preschool.

I was introduced to plants and gardening at a young age and watching seeds sprout has always fascinated me, especially annuals. Even though I understand the basic science behind it, I still marvel at their energy, at how a 10' (roughly 3 meter) vine can grow from seed in one summer.

I hope the children like this as much as I do -- I almost don't want to give it up but I'm dropping it off for them today.

The large colourful seed is a scarlet runner bean and the smaller one is a green bean. The scarlet runner bean will produce a long vine with lovely scarlet flowers and long beans.

I intentionally "planted" seeds in different orientations; rightside up, upside down, left, and right. I wanted to show the children how the roots still go down and, eventually, the stem and leaves upwards.

For you, I will mention tropisms, plant growth in reponse to a stimulus. There is geotropism, roots grow down; phototropism, turning or bending towards light; hydrotropism, growing towards water, and thigmotropism, turning or bending in response to a touch stimulus. I understand that there are additional ones that I didn't learn in highschool biology class; chemotropism, responding to chemical stimulus; traumatropism, responding to injury; and galvanotropism, responding to electrical stimulus. Thank you Encyclopedia Britannica for those last ones. That might be too much information for a preschooler, but I will teach them the word "cotyledon," the first one or two embryonic leaves. One of them will say it to their parents!

This next photo was taken on the first day I noticed roots.

And this is today. That's the cotyledon emerging on the highest bean.

...continued ...

A Science Project for the Preschool - a photo from the preschool!!

I hope you enjoyed these photos. All of them were taken with my iPad.

@originalworks