October - Seeds (of learning): is it better to fall quickly or widely?

One of our students has chosen an independent research project on seeds. We have the Montessori impressionistic charts for botany which is a good start place but nothing beats your own exploration. She has researched types and parts of seeds and presented this learning to the group. which then enabled many of her classmates to join in by going on seed hunts and exploring different methods of seed dispersal.

One of the challenges was to find a way of demonstrating seed dispersal by explosion. She chose a balloon containing bird seed and set to work to practice out on the park before running a session for 4 small groups the next day. It was fascinating measuring how far and wide individual seeds could be found. This led to further work for some of the children on calculating perimeter and area.

On the back of this work, we also used the RHS school gardening resource, making and testing out different types of seed spinners.

Teaching Tip: Don't put velcro sticky strips directly on skin! We did an effective demonstration of seed dispersal by animals - but maybe on a sock would be better! But it did lead to some fascinating research into George de Mestral. So all in the aid of science!