A Study of Seeds Camp Day
Welcome to our “Fun with Flower Power! – An Amazing DIY Plants Camp Week” series. For Day 2 of our camp week, we focused on seeds: what are seeds, how they’re related to flowers, and what seeds are common in our regular day! Read on for themed ideas on crafts, links to educational and interactive games, food snacks, and experiments!
A TYPICAL DAY
All kids are different and you can definitely vary your day with whatever works for you 🙂 But the gist of our day having our kiddos focus on some work books or online learning tools in the early morning, an intro to the day’s theme after they were done, some videos around lunch time, and themed activities (reading time, writing time, crafts, food crafts/snacks, and games or experiments) in the afternoon. Feel free to pick and choose whatever works for you 🙂
INTRO
Most kids are already familiar with what a plant is and that they need sunlight, so we didn’t have to deep dive into the introduction of it. We did a quick review of how plants grow (from a seed) and what they need. We paired the intro with a quick plant life sticker sheet from the Life Cycle Sticker Sheet Assortment (truly, we used a few of these sheets in other camps, so they had multiple purposes 🙂 )
WHAT TO WATCH
For our video of the day, we watched two stories read out loud. Both were about seeds and how they are part of the process that creates a plant.
FOOD CRAFTS / SNACKS
We had a fun time with our food snack craft of the day. While our kids were very familiar with seeds that they planted in the ground, they hadn’t realized we actually ate seeds as well 🙂 Here were a few that we had for snack time:
- Flower Seeds: Sunflower Seeds
- Squash Seeds: Pumpkin Seeds
- Legumes: Green Beans, Snap Peas
- Fruits: Pomegranate Seeds
EDUCATIONAL GAMES (Online and Printable)
If your little kiddos are in the mood for a little bit of learning fun & haven’t maxed out their screen time yet, pbs has a few interactive games showing seeds and how they spread.
- Seed Soaring. Spread dandelion seeds.
- Seed Racer. Explore how seeds spread
READING
It’s no secret that reading helps prevent that summer slide. Some even say this is the most important. For our book of the day, we picked a Level 1 National Geographic book that detailed the entire process: from seed to plant.
- National Geographic Seed to Plant by Kristin Baird Rattini.
WRITING & WRITING PROMPTS
Just like reading, writing helps prevent that summer slide by both encouraging their creativity but also their motor skills and penmanship.
If you’ve got a little one, have them trace words related to the theme: SEED, PLANT, FLOWER
If you’ve got older children, have them write a sentence or two up to a page or two (depending on their age). Encourage them to be creative AND give reasons for why they made certain choices.
- Imagine you found a magic seed. What would happen when it grew?
CRAFTS
If your kids are anything like mine, they LOVE crafts – (mostly, I think, for making the mess 🙂 ). For our craft of the day, we had some biodegradable mini planters (though you could use egg cartons or other upcycles. We let the kids decorate those with some flower stickers, lady bugs, and bees. Then we “planted” some foam flowers. Though we had some pre-cut foam flowers, we also had some felt in case they wanted to create their own.
STEM ACTIVITY
For our STEM activity, we started growing plants from seeds. We picked two different techniques & seeds. Much like the flower experiment from Day 1, the kids could check on this experiment each day as well 🙂
- Grow an avocado in water. We followed the 2nd option in the tutorial from apieceofrainbow.com
- Grow a bean seed. We also tried to grow a bean from a seed using a wet paper towel and jar. You can find a similar tutorial from littlebinsforlittlehands.com: Seed Jar Science Experiment.
THANK YOU!!!
Thank you for checking out our at home play / summer camp guide! If you enjoyed this article, please let us know what you think in the comments below and/or follow us on Pinterest
Also, if you haven’t already, check out some of our other at home play / summer guides: DIY Summer Camps.
Happy Learning!
