Going to Seed

Today we went to the Boise Foothills Learning Center for a class on Seeds! This place is great, and we love taking classes here. The teachers are dynamic, and the classes are very hands on.

The class started with a little seed instruction...
We learned the parts of a plant, what makes up a seed, where you find seeds, how seeds travel and & fertilize each other, etc.

I didn't know this before today...How many seeds does an apple have? (Every apple has the same number of seeds!)

After a little seed discussion, the class went outside to look for seeds.
Some were given big socks to put over their shoes to see what they could collect by walking around...
Others were given a blanket to drag around...
And the rest had little bowls to put their seed collection in. Here is Justin & Max's collection.
After about 20 minutes of exploring and collecting seeds, the class went back inside and sorted their seeds and shared what the discovered.

Then they were given a bunch of random supplies to make a seed carrier. In class we learned that seeds have "carriers" that help them travel. Some are floaters and some are fliers. So they had to choose which one they would make and then test it to see if it actually worked.

Here is the teacher with a blow dryer testing one of the boys' "fliers." It's the red thing on the top left corner. This one was a successful flier. Many of the kids had to return to the drawing board to make their fliers lighter.
Here they are testing to see if their "floaters" float.
This is Justin's floater. You can see his white seed in the blue wire.
The class was so fun. I must say, that I learned a lot. So many of the moms sit outside of the class and chat. I wouldn't miss this fun instruction for anything. Max and Justin both loved it.

Class Picture.