- cookie sheet or tray
- index cards for labeling
- nonfiction books about seeds
- variety of seeds and pictures (or real plants) of the plant they grow into
- museum
- plant
- seed
- shell
MA Standards:
Speaking and Listening/SL.PK.MA.1: Participate in collaborative conversations with diverse partners during daily routines and play.
English Language Arts/Language/L.PK.MA.5.a Demonstrate understanding of concepts by sorting common objects into categories (e.g., sort objects by color, shape, or texture).
Head Start Outcomes:
Language Development/Receptive Language: Attends to language during conversations, songs, stories, or other learning experiences.
PreK Learning Guidelines:
Mathematics/Patterns and Relations: Sort, categorize, or classify objects by more than one attribute.
English Language Arts/Language 4: Engage in play experiences that involve naming and sorting common words into various classifications using general and specific language.
Seed Museum
© Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Department of Early Education and Care (Jennifer Waddell photographer). All rights reserved.
Skill Focus: Compare and Contrast, Vocabulary
Create a seed museum with seeds you and the children gather from fruit and from their seed hunt. Display the seeds on a cookie sheet or large tray. If possible, identify each seed with a real plant or a photograph of the plant it came from and will grow into.
- Hold up or distribute seeds for children to explore as you explain that seeds are tiny baby plants inside a hard, dry coat or shell. Each baby seed grows into the same kind of plant that it came from. Focus attention on the seeds and pictures (or real plants) they grow into as you explain with examples, such as, An apple seed grows into an apple tree; A watermelon seed grows into a watermelon vine.
- Label the seeds with a word and/or picture.
- Explain to children that a museum is a place where special items are displayed so that people can go see them and learn about them. Explain that the cookie sheet with all of the seeds displayed is like a museum.
- Encourage children to visit the museum with friends and to look at the seeds and notice the differences in their size, shape, texture, and color. You may want to have an interactive area where children can open up the seeds to see what they look like inside.
Encourage children to discuss and record their observations about seeds in their science notebooks.