Planting Seeds with Precision

We were so happy to be able to "plant" seeds on a rainy day for a JMG Chapter One activity. Extending the math lesson was a wonderful bonus.

Junior Master Gardener Program Online Options

Wow, could a Title for a blog post be any more boring? The subject is not. We always have one or two children who miss a Gardening Club meeting due to illness, family having a new baby, and other things. While I try to help keep them up to speed by emailing projects, or mailing worksheets ... the JMG KidZone has another option for selected topics. Sometimes we don't have enough bugs, or can't find them in time for the lesson, so having a pictured set online is VERY helpful.

JMG Chapter One

The first chapter is on Plants, and several of the activities could be expanded into valuable lessons, but the requirment is to complete one Group activity and one Individual activity for each subsection. A complete list of these for the entire program is here at the JMG website under Helpful Tools.

My first brilliant idea that was very non-brilliant was for the Power Seeds, I was going to mail all of the kids an introduction letter, and a baggy with plaster of Paris and two bean seeds to see how much energy is stored in seeds. It was a very cool experiment.


Of course, as powerful as the experiment is, sending fine white powder through the post is a BAD IDEA! (Think Anthrax scare in South Florida, and so many other cases that weren't covered by media. So I simply handed out the bags at the meeting and let the kids feel how rock hard the plaster of Paris was with the Bean plant growing in it. This photo is just after they sprouted, they are now 4 inches tall. The kids were impressed!