The Perfect Plant to Grow With Preschoolers!

By Carla at Preschool Powol Packets - July 31, 2012

The perfect plant to grow with preschoolers grows quickly enough that you can measure new growth every day. This is the one!!

Growing plants with preschoolers is a classic science activity that can tie into math, language, and so much more! The entire lab gets even more exciting when you use the perfect plant: green onions!

Green onions are relatively cheap, wonderfully useful, and grow much, much faster than many other plants. The picture above shows how you will see the cuttings grow to a plant over a foot tall in a week. Each day, you can measure about an inch of growth!

Here's the easy How-To:

1- Cut the green onions down to about four inches above roots. (Make something yummy and healthy with top part!)

2- Place the 4"-long cuttings, root sides down, in a cup with enough water to cover half the cuttings.

3- If you're going to be measuring and tracking the growth, this is a great time to get your initial data. It's especially fun to use the centimeter side of the ruler so your child can see several numbers worth of growth each day.

4- Place the cup in a sunny window!

5- The next day, take it down and measure it again!

6- Each day, dump out the water, rinse out the cup, rinse off the roots, and replace the water with fresh water. This will help prevent mildew and mold on your plants.

7- You should be able to grow foot-tall onions and cut them back down to four inches at least twice before you lose a nice onion-y flavor. You can continue to grow and cut them, but the flavor will get watered down. Planting them in the soil (if your weather is right) will make the onion-y flavor last even longer.

This is also wonderful spring science! You can review the way plants absorb water through the roots, predict the growth, and practice measuring. It's easy to see the difference in the roots and the stem.

Are you trying to grow any plants with preschoolers?? I'd love to know!!