Planting Seeds

The kids and I had a great time getting the garden ready this weekend.  We kicked off the project by planting lots of seeds in one of those starter kits from Home Depot.  They sell trays now with neat little shrunken peat pellets that expand and crumble into dirt when water is added.  That was a big hit at our house -- kind of like those instant capsules that dissolve in water and expand into creatures -- except this was actually useful. It gave us an opportunity to talk about inventions and design -- I'm sure someone has a patent for that cool expanding pellet idea!  J.M., our fifth grader, carefully picked out the plants she wanted to start, and was so interested in the different sizes and shapes of the seeds.  She carefully planted them and drew a grid to map what was planted where.  She also used a little math to figure out how many seeds she needed for the allotted garden space that she had.  Later we had a good time in the garden when we moved a few pieces of wood that had been stationary all winter and found bugs and worms everywhere.  This led to a discussion of who eats what, where bugs go in winter, and how worms eat.  Good questions all!