Hey Everyone, hope you're all enjoying the Easter break or should that be Christmassy break with all the snow!!

I've planned an activity for Numeracy and as our topic is growth, I thought that the children could count seeds and then make a collage with them. I've just got 2 problems....

1) What materials can I use other than seeds that link into growth?
2) What can I use as a template to make the collage on?


Any ideas would be great,

Bobette x

Dried grasses?

Van Gogh's sunflowers or a similar picture?

Thank you for your Easter greetings.

In answer to your q's:

1) you could use soil/water/pots to link into growing, another thing you could do is the celery in food colouring trick which shows how 'plants' suck water up.

2) do you mean a template to stick the seeds to? If so you could do a sunflower and use sunflower seeds for the middle and tissue paper for outside and then sow the seeds and have a 'who's is the biggest sunflower' competition. Or if you are concentrating on numeracy, a I am suddenly realising you are you could use templates of numbers with each seed stuck to it and for example use a big seed (like a bean) for 1 etc.

additionally the sunflower thing would work as you could bring measurement into it.

I hope this gives you some ideas??

Or make a row of flowers/ plants with 1 petal or leaf, then 2 on the next, etc. You could do a beanstalk garden with them getting bigger as you go.

Grow a bean in a jam jar near the collage with wet paper towel holding it in place and water it - they can see the root and shoot growing then too. A control with no water will show them that water is necessary for growth. You can put one in a dark cupboard to show the value of light too - but that may be going too far - not sure of the age you are working with. The children can keep a record of growth ( weekly drawing/ photo) and use a ruler to measure the growth of the bean.

One tip for collage - only glue the area you want the stuff stuck to and use one material at a time (voice of experience!)

If you use PVA you could use dry potting compost for the 'soil'.

could you also grow cress?

just a thought.

x

Wow some fantastic ideas!!

Really like the sunflower idea that you described Veggie, using sunflower seeds, tissue paper etc to make a collage...very messy but lots and lots of fun!

Think it would be good to concentrate on the science side of things, so that they can actually grow a plant for themselves and have to water it, make sure that it has light etc.

for all your great ideas!


Looks like its off to the garden centre for me tomorrow