Wednesday, April 22, 2015

Planting Daisies

Happy Earth Day!

Back in my working-out-of-the-home days, I dreamt of a time I'd be able to stay home with my kids and do fun crafts and projects with them on the regular. Then, I planned Earth Day events for thousands of college students across the country, but what I really wanted to be doing was teaching my own children what it meant to take care of our planet. And while I now know every single minute of stay-at-home-mom life isn't chocked full of educational experiences, I am truly living my dream by having the opportunity to be with Tory and Aden on a special day like today.

Lately, Tory's shown an interest in learning how plants grow. Her preschool class is covering this topic right now, and it's inspired all kinds of questions and dialogue for us at home. I can't wait to involve her in planting flowers in the yard later this spring, but in the meantime we decided to plant daisies indoors in one of those I Can Grow pots for kids.

The kit came with everything we needed for growing daisies, including potting soil and a packet of seeds. One afternoon last week, Tory and I set to work in planting her flowers. She was so excited!


First, we broke up the potting soil disk into chunks and moistened with water. Tory misunderstood my instruction to sprinkle droplets of water onto the disk and instead plopped the soil straight into the cup of water soaking it completely. Oops! Oh well, we had to do a little straining to recover the soil, but it all worked out in the end.



Once the soil was moistened, we loosely placed it back in the pot and planted the daisy seeds inside.


The instructions directed us to cover the pot with plastic wrap to create a greenhouse effect and help the seeds sprout. It should take about 3 weeks for the flowers to grow.

I have to admit, I'm a little nervous the daisies seeds won't transpire into flowers. Tory will be so heartbroken! It's already a test in patience as we wait for the seeds to sprout. "In three days I'll have daisies," Tory has said on more than one occasion. "In three weeks," I keep reminding her.

There's a neat tutorial I found online about watching seeds grow in a clear glass jar. I think we'll give that a try as well so Tory can watch the progress day by day.

2 comments:

  1. try Garden in a glove. take a seed, bean seeds work best, and put it in a damp cotton ball put the seeds in the finger of a plastic love or use a small baggie like a little jewelry bag. hang it in the window or if you use a small bag she could wear it as a necklace. it is really cool to watch the seed germinate. I always did this acrivity with my junior high and high school plant science classes.

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  2. I sure hope they sprout!! I meant to check off our plant something item on the bucket list on Earth day but life got in the way.

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