Authentic learning comes from active, real-life experience. With authentic science experiments, children act and mimic how a scientist works. Authentic learning is important because children understand their world through interaction and representation of real-world experiences and environment. Plants are found in the everyday world of children. As part of the bigger picture of life cycles, sprouting seeds teaches the basics of a real-life situation. Children can relate their new knowledge to everyday occurrences.
There are a few options to experiment with seeds. Children can germinate seeds in different environments such as paper towels and soil, comparing the germination rates and growth. Environmental conditions can be changed between seed groups, demonstrating the conditions necessary for optimum growth. Through the comparison of control and experimental seed groups, children develop critical thinking skills in hypothesizing and prediction. Water amounts, sunlight, temperature and soil types can all be manipulated to demonstrate cause and effect.
Sprouting seeds provides the opportunity for children to address and build many foundational skills needed for further development and learning. Foundational math skills, such as counting, sequencing, measuring and graphing, are developed during a seed-sprouting experiment. As seeds grow and develop children measure the growth and graph each seed. The adult can design a control group of seeds for which the conditions of sprouting can be changed --- less water and sun, as an example. Children will learn one-to-one correspondence, similarities and differences as they fill in a graph chart of growth.
Seeds are tiny and require fine motor skills to manipulate. Children will use tweezers and pincer grasps to carry out the experiment. Hand-eye coordination is developed through watering, measuring and filling in a graph chart of seed germination and growth. An educator might introduce the use of a microscope for children to look at a seed in various stages of germination. Seeds germinated between layers of paper towels need to be transplanted into soil, requiring small tools for making small holes in the soil.
Sprouting seeds can be an aspect of a larger curriculum study of life cycles. Children can read and learn about the stages of plant life as a whole. Children create life cycle charts and sequencing cards, and they learn new vocabulary such as seedling, germinate and sprout. Growing a seed to vegetable or fruit to seed again is a wonderful example of the life cycle.