Here’s a fun activity to get you and your kids outside and exploring nature and Springtime! Go on a seed hunt! Take a walk around your neighbourhood park or natural area and see how many different kinds of seeds you can find – you’ll be surprised at the variety of shapes and sizes!
Amazon Affiliate links are included in this post. Please see disclosure for details.
What You Will Need
- a bag to collect specimens while on your walk
- small glass bottles to store seeds
- large magnifying glass and child-size tweezers
- tape and a marker to label your seeds
Starting the Seed Hunt
Onetime and I started our seed hunt at the local park and within 5 minutes, we had found 7 different kinds of seeds!
Before we went on our hunt, we talked about what a seed is, and how it can grow into a new plant if the conditions are right! I had to do most of the pointing out of seeds, but Onetime enjoyed collecting the specimens and putting them in the bag.
When we got home, we spread our seeds onto the table and separated all our seeds into small containers. I labelled the plants we knew and put question marks on the ones we didn’t know. Since that first hunt, we continued to find more seeds in our neighbourhood adventures and Onetime’s collection is growing!
Continuing the Learning
To further Onetime’s understanding of seeds, we decided to plant some easy-growing marigold and string bean seeds. This will let us talk even more about what conditions seeds need to grow into plants!
What a fun way to learn about the cycle of nature! Helping kids learn to closely observe, categorize and then label different objects is such a fundamental scientific skill – and a lot of fun!
You could even play an I-spy game where you describe one of the seeds and your child tries to guess which one you have picked. (eg. “I see a seed that is brown, round and smaller than a cm long.”)
Find a cool art project to do with seeds by clicking here!
Did you like to collect any of nature’s objects when you were young? I loved looking for seashells when I was a kid – and I still do. Has your child started any nature collections yet? I’d love to hear about it – leave me a comment!
Happy collecting!
To find even more fun and educational activities as well as positive parenting tips, follow me on Facebook, and Pinterest.
This is a great activity to try! I’d never be able to determine what seed went with what by the time we got home, but this makes me want to take my 4 year old on a walk to see what we can find! Thanks for the inspiration!
For sure Maggiemaysgifts! We didn’t know the half of what we found – but it was fun looking! I suppose you could always get out a tree/plant identification guide if you really wanted to know!
Such a cute activity, children always collecting things on walks out and this is such a lovely way of displaying their treasures.
Thanks for dropping by WildFamilyFun! Collecting things is such a natural child behaviour isn’t it? We still have our seed jars in a box, and need to think more about how they can be displayed nicely!
I love this idea. My Little Man isn’t much of a collector but he loves to go for a walk and will certainly pick things up and explore them before throwing them as far as he can.
Thanks for sharing at the Outdoor Play Party 🙂 Hope you can join us again from tomorrow x
Thanks Mudpie Mama! We just need to figure out a cute way to display the jars. Thanks for dropping by!