A Little Science

As I've mentioned before, we love Apologia's Exploring Creation series for Elementary-aged children. Last year we worked our way through Astronomy, and this year we've slowly but surely been learning about the world of plants through their Exploring Creation with Botany book. Its been a lot of fun, and we're learning tons. Isn't that half the fun of homeschooling as a parent - learning things you never learned yourself, or at least had forgotten?!

We recently conducted an experiment. Each of the three boys (we do Science while Nathan and Judah are napping, so its just Isaac, Ezra, and Joel) placed bean seeds (which are actually just dried beans, you know!) into separate plastic baggies, along with a wet paper towel. One baggie we placed in a dark closet, another was hung in a window, and the third was placed in the refigerator. Each boy made a hypothesis about their particular seed and whether or not it would grow, how much, and why or why not.

One of the funniest thing about this is the boys kept calling their hypotheses "I hope these..." as in "My I hope these is that I hope these will grow". LOL!

Anyway, we were supposed to chart the progress daily, but since it was Thanksgiving week, we didn't. But it was an even more interesting discovery to see what had happened in the week that the seeds hadn't been monitored.

Here are Ezra's seeds - his were in the refrigerator (see the little white beans at the bottom?):

His hypothesis was that they would not grow because it was cold and dark, and he was correct. He was a little disappointed that he was correct, though.

Here are Isaac's - his were in the window:

His hypothesis was also correct - he guessed they would grow well because they were in a sunny window.

Joel's are the ones that surprised everyone. His were in a dark closet, where no light ever gets to (in the basement next to the furnace and water heater). Joel's hypothesis was that they probably wouldn't grow, of if they did, it would be very little. The other boys agreed with him. Surprise!

However, we did notice that while they grew the biggest of all of them, they weren't a nice healthy green color like the ones that got sunlight. We also had to determine why they grew so big, despite the lack of light. We finally came to the conclusion that they grew so big beacuse they were searching for light!

This experiment really helped reinforce the fact that the only things seeds need to germinate is warmth, water, and air - light isn't actually needed! However, once they start growing, light becomes a necessary resource to help them be green and healthy. It was interesting to see how the beans kept in the closet were trying to burst out of their baggie in their hunt for light, but the ones in the window just grew at a normal rate as happy little beans.

Just another day in the life of homeschooling :-)