Growing a Lima Bean

This week in Science we are learning all about plants.  We are starting with seeds. 

Plants need air, water, light and food to grow. Plants make their own food from air and light and need the water to grow.

I started with soaking some dried lima beans (right out of the bag from the grocery store) overnight.  This morning a few were already losing their seed coat. We talked about what a seed coat was and what it's function was.  The next thing we noticed was that the embryo was coming out of  one of the beans.They made guesses on what it was and why it was coming out.  There's a video about how seeds grow here.

I made a "greenhouse" template out of construction paper for them to decorate to house our seed in the baggie. I had seen this all over Pinterest.  We watched a cute video about Sid the Seed on YouTube, which you can find here.  The kiddos loved this video and they had TONS of questions.  Sid doesn't want to go out into the world, so he lives down deep in a hole with his two friends, a caterpillar and a spider. Each friend ends up leaving the hole (caterpillar turns into a butterfly and the spider makes a balloon to fly away) leaving Sid all alone. He feels sad so he decides he is going to explore the world too! He fills up his cup and drinks and drinks and drinks tons of water until he starts changing. He sprouts roots and starts to grow bigger and bigger until finally he becomes a tree and his friends come to live ON him. Very cute.

After we finished watching our videos it was time to start growing!!  Each boy took a napkin and placed three beans on it in a straight line giving the beans enough space to grow.  They then used a spray bottle to spray the seeds and napkin.

After they sprayed the entire napkin, they added another napkin on top of the beans, sprayed that then folded it over and placed it in their baggies. I let the boys staple their own baggies to their greenhouse and tape it in the window.

Make sure you leave the bag open on top to allow air in!  We put it in a sunny spot, but may end up moving it considering the sun doesn't seem to be hitting our window that much.

Enjoy!