Spring is in the air! The flowers are budding in our gardens and in the forest. What better time than to learn about plants with your young ones. Try this fun spring activity with your kids. Then use our plants worksheets to learn about seeds, the parts of plants, the needs of plants, the plant life cycle and how plants adapt.
Growing beans on cotton balls
For this activity, you’ll need the following items:
- A glass jar
- Cotton wool balls
- A packet of bean seeds
Once you have all the items, do the following.
- Fill the jar about ¾ full with the cotton balls. Don’t pack them down. Keep them loose in the jar.
- Moisten the cotton balls with water, so they are just damp. They cannot be sopping wet.
- Poke a finger into the cotton to make a shallow indentations – try 2 – 3 indentations. Place each bean seed in the indentation. Don’t push it into the cotton, let it rest in the hole you made. Don’t make too many indentations as you want to give the beans enough room to grow.
- Place the jar with the seeds in a sunny spot for about ½ hour each day and let the jar sit in a well-lit area for the rest of the day.
- Water the beans when the cotton gets dry. Again, don’t drench the cotton in water, just make the cotton damp. If it is hot where you live, you will need to water the beans more often.
- Watch for the beans to sprout after three days. If the beans haven’t sprouted after a week, you’ll have to start over.
- Once the sprouts are 8 inches/20 cm tall, you can transfer the plant with the cotton segments its roots are attached to into your garden. Remember the beans will grow long and thin, so you’ll want to support them with poles.
- After several weeks of lovingly watering and caring for your plants you’ll be rewarded with beans to pick fresh from your garden.
In our grade 1 science section, we have created several worksheets for your kids to practice what they learn about plants in school.
Parts of plants
We provide two worksheets for students to identify the parts of a plant and the parts of a tree.
Seeds
Students review the relationship between seeds, plans and fruits in these worksheets.
Needs of plants
In these worksheets, students cover the needs of plants: sun, soil, air and water.
Plant life cycle
Students follow the life cycles of plants in these worksheets.
How plants adapt
We’ve created two worksheets on the adaptations made by cacti and water lilies to survive in their environments.
