One of the answers is in your own statement. "I am going to be helping fifty students winter sow two containers per student."

Help them, don't do it for them. Children this age remember what they physically do. When they see the results they will be proud of themselves and want to continue the process. My granddaughter has been planting seeds with me since she was 3 years old. She is 10 now and still loves to plant seeds and enjoy the results..

If you are afraid they will make a mess let them sprinkle the seeds on top. You and the teachers can press the seeds in the soil and water them while you explain winter sowing to them. In their minds they have planted the seeds and you have planted the concept.

I envy you. Teaching children is the greatest joy on earth.

Thank you, Molly!

We are bringing the children to a local nursery for the field trip, so they will be filling the jugs and sowing the seeds themselves--for sure! :) We will be working in one of the greenhouses.

I am concerned about during the presentation and wondering about how much hands on to allow at that time--in the classroom. I don't want to make a mess in the classroom; the teachers won't appreciate that. :)

Thanks for your help and experience, Molly. I hope this will be a memorable learning experience, too.

cheers,
Norabelle

This is a class project. After the slides you sow. Do not water. Provide printouts instucting the students how to do an overnight bottom soak at home. At WinterSown.Org there is transplant info for Hunk-O-Seedlings, because this an educational project you're welcome to print out and share any info from WinterSown.

Do not water the containers. Watering containers in a public building means making mud inside the public building--it's a quick way of souring the administration towards you ever returning.

When I teach kids I always put on the back of the printouts some line drawings that the kids can color in on their own--when I teach nutrition the line drawings are of common veggies, if I teach flowers then the drawings are of the varieties from the seeds we sow. Many graphic websites will have free coloring book illustrations that you could use for your project.

T

I misunderstood. I didn't realize there would be a nursery part and a classroom part.

I speak from experience working with one child at a time. Much easier.

Trudi has the right answers. I continue to learn from her.

Start with a slide of a jug full of lush green sprouts! Maybe it will hold their attention?

Hi there,

I'm sorry, Molly, I didn't make it clear in my first post that the field trip would be leaving the school. :)

Thank you so much, Trudi! I am grateful to be able to use some materials from wintersown.org, and I like the idea of having something to color on the back. This can help the kids to keep the instructions if they have their art on it, too.

So, I'll sow but without water. ;) I do want to be invited back. :)

Thank you again!

cheers,
Norabelle

One more thing to think about. When you are talking to a large group of children that age, their attention wanders pretty quickly no matter how interesting the topic might be. I would try to keep things short and sweet, maybe throw in some questions that they might be able to answer etc. I wish you great luck with your field trip! I hope it goes well and that the kids will take wintersowing home with them and continue on with it. That is great that you are doing this!

It would take me a lot of courage to attempt that! There's a lot of ground to cover. Two thoughts:

For setting outside, I'd pre dampen the soil initially (it's how I WS) to make sure they have a better chance and have it soak awhile beforehand if possible. I do bottom water things I start inside. Some containers it takes forever to wick up to the top or never it seems. Once outside and almost completely sealed except for venting, I don't think it will dry out very soon unless it's on a covered porch or under eaves.

Do you sow your own in dry soil and bottom water before setting out? Seems like a lot of extra time and work, not that explaining bottom watering isn't a good idea. Maybe I'm wrong.

Secondly, I'd try to figure out some way so the kids are less likely to spill the seeds unless they're large so they can be picked up, shame to waste them and easy to spill.

Good luck! It would have to be geared for their age, and if I were teaching an adult, I think I'd probably give them too much info at once, if this happens or with these kind of seeds/containers . . .etc., overwhelming them.

Taking some sprouts is an excellent idea if you have some. I'd have to do that inside and started some time back.

Oh this is silly but I'm finicky, and I scatter different ways, but sometimes too many land in one place, on top of each other and none elsewhere. So I take my little spoon and gently push them around so they are distributed more evenly. If they're so tiny I can't see them, I sprinkle in pinches, haven't used the salt shaker/sugar mixture too much lately but will use it when I sow my lobelia in porch boxes.

Thank you october17, gardenluv, and aliska for the additional help and suggestions. I like all the input; it helps me more with visualizing and anticipating sticky/tricky areas. :)

One thing we will do during the presentation is make seed packets, which I learned about on a thread here last year. This is a little activity, but it's hands on. When we are at the nursery, the students will use the seed packets they made to carry the seeds to their jugs. Like you, aliska, I am worried about losing seeds. I do have some poppy seeds that the teachers like, but other than that, we are trying to choose seeds that are a little bigger--echinacea, bachelor buttons, lead plan, milkweed, hoary vervain, and larkspur. :)

cheers,
Norabelle

Good choices, and maybe I shouldn't have contradicted Trudi because she is master winter sower :-). I do what's most efficient for me, but I'm really still learning.

I hope you and the kids have a memorable day. It's hard to think of anything better for modern kids to instill a love in them for planting and the wonders of nature. It might be something they always remember.

I think it's great of the others of you who mentioned letting the children/grandchildren help.

Aliska, everyone else, we all learn from each other's shared experiences. We are Winter Sowers and it is what we do. We tweak to suit our own needs and if it works we can share that. I am always happy to see people are thinking and doing things differently because stagnation of thought is just horrifying ;-O I wrote about WS because it stimulates your brain. It's an easy skill to learn, but what you do with that skill is what it's all about.

In the classroom, having a knowlege goal is important, it makes sowing these seeds a path to the knowledge goal--that's what you learn from the lesson. Seeds become the vehicle for discussion.

Are you doing common cottage garden annuals? What's a cottage garden? Can you grow veggies and flowers together?

Are you doing veggies? What nutrients are in those veggies, why do you need nutrition?

Are you sowing heirlooms? What's your heritage, or did you garden with an older person-a senior citizen, a grandparent, why do we save seeds?

Are you sowing to attract pollinators? What is pollin? What is pollination? What are pollinators? Are only insects pollinators? Can animals and birds pollinate too?

Are you sowing to attract beneficial insects? What is a bad bug, what is a good bug? What is IPM--Intergrated Pest Management? (which might be a tough concept for younger children, but you could infer that a preying mantid will eat bad bugs and so you don't have to purchase a chemical to kill bad bugs--you're using Mother Nature to police itself.) Will Preying Mantids eat good bugs too? Yes, but it's a balance. You will lose some good ones with the bad ones.

So, as you see from the suggestions I made, there are a lot of ways to use sowing seeds as part of a lesson.

If this is just botany then sowing the seeds is the main part of the lesson and after-germination care is follow-up. What are seeds? What is a seedling? How does it survive? Why would it die? What is photosynthesis?

Sowing seeds is a skill; learning the skill to achieve a knowledge goal provides greater dimension to the lesson.

T

PS...a couple of night ago I was looking at a youtube of a praying manits on a computer screen trying to eat the cursor. Ignore the comments, it's the usual idiots in action, but the video itself is interesting.

Here is a link that might be useful: Computer Bug

Hi!

Just a quick update: the presentation went well and the kids are SO excited. They LOVED making the seed packets from seed catalog pages, which I read about in a thread here or another GW forum.

One class has a butterfly garden, and are excited about plants to grow.

Anecdotal info, the seeds most requested/chosen were larkspur, delphinium, poppy (oriental and annual), agastache Sunset Hyssop, lettuce, and hollyhocks. The delphiniums are a challenging choice, but I am going to plant extra seeds myself, so if the kids' containers don't work out, I can bring some for them. (Part of gardening, as in life, is learning through failure, but it's nice to get an unexpected lift when something doesn't work out.)

Again, thank you to all of your good ideas and suggestions. Trudi, I made a nice handout with wintersown.org material and my own experience, and I found a cute coloring picture, too. This will go home with the containers after we visit and sow at the nursery on Thursday.

cheers,
Norabele