Last year, my then 2.5 year old son Onetime and I had a blast finding seeds outside and starting a seed collection. We also went on an indoor search for seeds. After learning a little bit about what seeds are (that’s the science part!), we had an all-seed snack and then made this fun open-ended seedy CD art!
A Seedy Hunt
To begin our indoor seed hunt, we raided the cupboards and found all of these goodies! The rice was leftover from our Spring/Easter sensory bin. We had corn kernels, rice, red lentils, a mixed bean soup mix, and oatmeal. We didn’t use the pecans for our art – we ate them!
SCIENCE NOTE: Did you know that beans, legumes, grains, and nuts are all different kinds of seeds? I just learned this too!
A Seedy Snack
Next, we checked our fridge and found some more seedy munchies! It was surprising how many seeds we found! It was really easy to pull together an all-seed snack.
If you wanted to have a seedy snack, in addition to the foods pictured above, you could also have popcorn, or nuts of any kind (we don’t have a lot of nuts in our house because of Onetime’s peanut allergy.)
We gathered many new samples of seeds from our snack for Onetime’s seed collection. It was really neat to see Onetime’s surprise at the size of an avocado seed!
SCIENCE NOTE: Did you know that fruits are just nature’s way of helping seeds disperse? When animals eat the fruits, they usually eat the seeds and carry those seeds undigested to other places where new plants can grow! Cooooool!!!!
Seedy CD Art Making
After adding more specimens to our collection, it was time to get artsy!
I spread out a piece of contact paper inside a pizza box (to contain the mess) and taped down the edges. Then I left out a plate of seeds and let Onetime CREATE!
Onetime seemed especially attracted to the larger beans at first and told me he was making a “snowman”! I guess it really WAS the Winter that never ended this year!
When Onetime was done, I pressed down on all the seeds to make sure they were stuck well, then gently shook off the paper. I was surprised that the contact paper actually had no problem holding onto almost all of the seeds – even the larger ones!
To preserve Onetime’s art, I cut the contact paper into a 5.5 ” by 4.75″ or 14 cm x 12 cm rectangle and taped it into an empty CD jewel case. Alternately, you could just cut your contact paper to fit the jewel case first and have your child do their art inside the case.
Display Options: If your child wants the art to have a see-through background – put the contact paper into the CD case by itself. If they want a coloured background, cut some coloured construction paper to the dimensions above and slip that under the art.
I just leaned Onetime’s beautiful mini-masterpieces on a bookshelf, but if you wanted to hang yours, you could easily hot-glue gun (or tape) a coloured paperclip to the back of the case to hang on a wall, or attach a piece of string to hang in a window!
Today’s post is part 4 of a 5 Senses Science Blog Hop that we are participating in with a bunch of other awesome blogs!
This week’s theme was science activities that have to do with the sense of TASTE. Check out the other fun posts below! Links will be added as posts go live.
Ice Cream in a Bag – What Do We Do All Day?
Tasty Color Theory: Color Mixed Candies – Babble Dabble Do
Rock Candy – Little Bins for Little Hands
Miracle Berry Taste Testing – Fun at Home With Kids
Make Your Own “Exploding” Chocolate Candy – Pink Stripey Socks
To find even more fun and educational activities as well as positive parenting tips, follow us on Facebook, and Twitter.
Happy seeding!
What a fun way to get your little ones involved with science!
Thanks for linking up with The Thoughtful Spot!
Thanks for dropping by The Kennedy Adventures!
This is so good for fine motor, too!
That’s true Erica. Picking up all those little seeds really used the pincer grasp! Thanks for dropping by!