Growing

I read this at Mom to the Screaming Masses.  And went back to read the original idea here.  And thought to myself, "I am a scientist.  I like to try stuff to see what will happen.  I like to listen to science podcasts for fun."  (I credit article reports in high school science classes for this.  Or always having Flying Magazine and Time or Newsweek lying around the house.  Either way.)  Then I had trouble thinking of what science stuff (if any) I have been doing with my daughters (ages 8 and 3) recently.  Sure, this morning, in the car, I fielded a question about why the signal for Radio Disney has hiccups.  (It's an AM station.)  And what does AM and FM stand for (Thanks Google.  Amplitude Modulation and Frequency Modulation.) 

But you know what we did this weekend that was an experiment and real, actual science, but none of us thought of it as science?  We planted seeds. 

When we were at my sister's house a few weeks ago, my daughter spit some pickle seeds into the dirt and convinced her cousin that now they would grow "pickle trees".  My sister texted me and said that my nephew was still on the lookout for pickle trees and was blaming his babysitter for not watering them.  This made us (my two daughters and me) start thinking about growing cucumbers.  And we have a few pumpkins still sitting around from Halloween.  One hollowed itself out, the other is "like new".  One year, we accidentally grew some pumpkin plants, but all we got was great flowers - no baby pumpkins.  Since then, La has been wanting to try it again.  (me too.) 

So, here's what we've got:

3 12-spot jiffy seed starting tray
1 Abby Cadabby garden bag and pumpkin growing kit (comes with it's own pumpkin seeds too)
Dora gloves
1 pack each:  pumpkins, cucumber, lettuce
2 leftover Halloween pumpkins
1 tangerine's worth of sprouted seeds (placed a wet paper towel in a cheap reusable plastic container, put seeds on top, closed the container, let it sit for a while (a week or two?) until the seeds sprout.)
1 Subway cup.
1 Disney popcorn bucket.

So, now we've got:
1 jiffy seed  tray with lettuce
1 jiffy seed tray with the packaged pumpkin seeds
1 jiffy seed tray with 1/2 and 1/2 of the seeds from the Halloween pumpkins
the jiffy pots for the Abby Cadabby kit planted with the pumpkins that came with it
the Subway and Disney containers planted with tangerine seeds.

We will see what happens.  We tend to do best with things that enjoy benign neglect.  We may start the cucumber seeds in a baggie on the window.  And we just set aside an egg carton that we finished on Sunday.