We had an amazingly fun week learning about seeds recently in my classroom. The kids just loved exploring seeds all week long. Whether you’re looking to explore the plant life cycle, talking about nutrition, or gardening – there are so many reasons to explore seeds with your students! If you’re ready for some hands-on, engaging ideas for exploring seeds, keep reading!

Why You’ll Love Exploring Seeds with Your Students

I love bringing hands-on learning into the classroom. One of my favorite ways to do this is in our science lessons. For example, when exploring seeds, there are so many great opportunities for hands-on learning. Another added benefit to this topic is that it’s also pretty simple to weave in other subjects, too! Math, writing, and reading are all things you can expect to work into your lessons on exploring seeds. So, how do we get started? So glad you asked! Here are a few of the activities we used in my room while exploring seeds!

Read Books About Exploring Seeds

Books are a staple in my classroom because they offer a fun way to introduce new topics. Everyone loves read aloud time, including me! There are so many great books out there about seeds and the plant life cycle, but here are a few of the ones we like best:

Seeds by Vijaya Bodach 

This book has beautiful, real photos that will be so helpful in your seed exploration activities. This book is written in easy-to-follow language for new readers and will be great to read aloud as well as an option for students to flip through independently. I like that this book introduces the concept that seeds are in all kinds of plants. Trees, shrubs, flowers, fruits, and vegetables all have seeds. This is often a new idea for my kiddos as they tend to think more about seeds being used to grow trees and flowers. More on how to explore the seeds in foods below!

From Seed to Plant by Gail Gibbons

This is a classic picture book that’s absolutely perfect for exploring this topic in your classroom. Inside you find tons of great descriptions and bright illustrations that will help students fully grasp how seeds grow into plants. This book is jam-packed with great information and essential vocabulary words, so it’s a great one to use as a starting point for your lessons.

Students will learn about every stage of the plant life cycle including processes of pollination, seed formation, and germination. I also love that this book includes tons of bright, colorful diagrams showing each part of a plant, different types of seeds, and how they grow. There are even instructions for a seed-growing project at the end along with a page of interesting facts. This is a must-add to your collection!

Exploring Seeds by Kristin Sterling 

Last on this list, I think you and your primary students will love this one! Exploring Seeds is about exactly what it sounds like! Students will follow along as they learn about all kinds of different seeds and the plant life cycle. I love this book because it has a nice mix of real photos and helpful diagrams and illustrations. It’s also written in an emergent reader style, so it’s perfect for your classroom library.
 

Hands-On Learning Activities for Exploring Seeds

After reading some books and introducing this topic, it’s time to get started! Here are the activities we used to explore seeds in my classroom.

Lima Bean Seed Experiments

One of the first things we did in our lessons on exploring seeds was a lima bean experiment. The goal here is to help students understand that seeds are living things. We do this by first having a discussion and then conducting a little experiment to see if our classroom hypothesis about seeds is correct. Best of all, this is so easy and inexpensive to do. All you need are some lima beans, cups, and water.

On Day 1, I start out by showing my students a dried lima bean and asking the question “Is this alive?” Most of the students said no, but a few said yes.  Next, I took out a lima bean that I had soaked in water for a few hours and showed them how I could peel off the seed coat and look inside the seed. And as if that wasn’t enough – we found a baby plant living in the seed! If this doesn’t reel your kids in, I don’t know what will!

Hands-On Learning in Action!

Next comes the hands-on learning part of this activity. Allow your students to test this out for themselves. First, start by soaking some lima beans in water. You can give each student a cup, or soak them all together. Give yourself a few hours, but you can do more. Actually, the longer they soak, the easier the seed coat comes off.

Once the time has passed, give each student a soaked lime bean and let them pull it apart to see what they find inside.  During all of this, we have a discussion about working gently with the seed. Once the little scientists started working, my room was silent. They were so diligent in their efforts to peel the seed coat and find the baby plant. This is SO much fun for the kids and will really fire them up to learn more about seeds, plants, and the plant life cycle.

Once we were done with this first part, we completed a diagram of the seed in our science journals. We also wrote a little about what we learned. We taped the real seed into the journal too!

Exploring Seeds in the Foods We Eat

The next day we talked more about seeds and I posed the question “Do we eat seeds?”. We had a great discussion about what seeds do and different kinds of seeds in an attempt to answer this question.

Although the class decided that we don’t eat seeds very often, they did conclude that we do eat seeds because of the lima bean the day before. We couldn’t continue without finding out some other kinds of seeds that we eat.

Exploring Seeds in Fruits and Vegetables

I think the kids tend to think of seeds with flowers and trees.  Focusing on food seemed to rock their little worlds! So what better way to keep them intrigued than a day of seed exploration using food?! With science journals in hand, we headed to the “science lab” to explore seeds in many different fruits and vegetables! They were amazed by all the different shapes, sizes, and colors of seeds!

For this activity, you can bring in some different types and fruits and veggies that seeds we eat and seeds we don’t eat. For example, you might bring in some strawberries, bananas, melon, bell peppers, and tomatoes. Ask students to consider if these things have seeds, and if they do – do we eat them? You can slice them open if they get really stumped!

We documented our observations in our science journal. This awesome resource is one a friend had from years ago. This is an AIMS Science activity in case you might have access to it! My kids loved this and couldn’t stop talking about it all day long. Boy, oh boy you should have heard them at lunch as they walked through the cafeteria line! The cafeteria staff were serving oranges and cucumbers and my students quickly found the seeds in there too! It’s so fun to see them so excited about learning!

Sorting and Graphing Seeds

Once they discovered that seeds come in all shapes and sizes, we had the perfect segue way into our Seed Sorting and Graphing activity! I gave each student a little cup filled with a variety of different seeds. After introducing the different types of seeds I let them get to work.

The kids sorted out their seeds by type and then got to work counting and graphing. This is a skill we have been working on all year long, so it was definitely a great way to bring some math into the mix! As they worked, I circulated around the room to observe and see how everyone was doing. This was a fun activity and a great way to practice another skill while we explored seeds as a class.

Exploring Seeds in the Plant Life Cycle

After a week filled with investigating different types of seeds, and where we find seeds, it was time to focus on how a seed grows. I like to kick this lesson off with an educational video that helps the kids understand the plant life cycle. There are so many fun ones on YouTube, but I like this one. It covers a lot of the same things your students have likely heard in the books you’ve been reading but it’s a great refresher. This Plant Life Cycle Song is also fun to reinforce these concepts when it’s time to review.

After that, I draw my own diagram on the board, explaining and reviewing each step of the plant life cycle as we go. After that, your students can draw their own Life Cycle of a Plant chart in their science journals or on a piece of paper. I encourage mine to fill in the vocabulary words for each stage as well. You can extend this activity for children who are writing sentences independently by having them write a short sentence for each step.

Planting Seeds

Then I saved the best for last. . . What better way to learn about something than to experience it firsthand? I think this is what science is all about! That’s exactly why I decided to have my kids plant some seeds of their own.

To be honest, my first thought was to do this “the easy way.” You know, hand out cups already filled with soil so they could quickly and easily plant their seeds. But then it dawned on me – what fun is that?!  

So, instead, I prepared the room. I cut open some trash bags and covered all the tables with them. Then I added a mound of soil to each table. I gave each student a clear plastic cup to use as a pot and a smaller white cup to use as a “shovel”.

Tips and Suggestions for this Activity

I started by modeling my expectations – we all know this is a must in the kindergarten classroom! Make sure to spend some time talking about what we’re trying to accomplish and how to keep the classroom clean as we go. In my room, we decided to add 3 scoops of soil to the pot so that as the roots grew they would have somewhere to go.

Then it was time to add the seeds. Each student got 3 seeds to plant. I chose a flowering plant that would bloom in 30-40 days, which was just in time for Mother’s Day at the time we did this. I found the blooming information on the back of the seed packet and looked for one that fit our time schedule! Then we covered our seeds with one more scoop of soil.  We used the bottom of the “shovel” to pat it down gently. All in all, the kids LOVED this and I’m glad I allowed them the chance to do it!

Last, we had to find a place that would allow our seeds to get the air, water, and sunlight they need. We opted for the hallway by the playground. This is the perfect place for us to check on our seeds on a daily basis. Every few days we planned to document our observations in our science journal. The kids were so excited to have their very own plant and I loved seeing their excitement during this activity.

More Ideas for Exploring Seeds

After all of the seed exploration in your classroom, I know you and your students will be brimming with excitement! Hands-on learning activities, especially science-based ones like these are a lot of fun in the primary classroom. If you’re looking for more ideas to explore seeds, here’s a few more that looked fun to me:

• Use various seeds to create a 3D picture. This would be SO fun on a Friday afternoon and make good use of the seeds you used in your sorting and graphing activities
• Try a window growing kit to observe sprouts. You can also do this with small sandwich baggies filled with cotton balls, a little water, and your seeds. Then tape them to a sunny window and watch as sprouts appear!
• Fill a sensory tub with beans, plastic pots, mini shovels, and plastic flowers. This is a fun sensory activity that will allow kids to “pretend play” gardening. Try adding this to your dramatic play area just for fun!
• Study other types of plants and seeds in depth! I actually have a whole post on how we did this with pumpkins. It will allow for even more opportunities to explore seeds, learn about the plant life cycle, and get some hands-on learning! Hop on over and check it out and have fun learning with your kids!

No matter how you choose to focus on exploring seeds in your classroom, I am confident that your activities will be a hit! Students love hands-on learning, so don’t be afraid to get a little dirty and have fun!

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