The 22nd April is the Annual Earth Day – a day to increase awareness and appreciation of the Earth’s Natural Environment. Working in Conservation for many years as a Field Biologist and Environmental Educator I am so happy that year after year this day is getting more and more recognition.
As J and T are so young I wanted something that would catch their interest as well as teach them a little about the Earth’s Natural Environment and found the inspiration whilst cooking and planting seeds recently. The world comes in cycles and one of the things I love about nature is how new growth can sprout from things that seem to be dead.
We’ve been looking at growing a lot recently – we watched some water bead grow, we’ve grown passengers for our egg carton choo choo train and planted some seeds (the cress is the only one that has grown so far I have my fingers crossed that more will) so this seemed a great way to show growth from something that seemed dead – carrot tops.
What you need to show growth from something that seems dead
The top end of a chopped up carrot
A shallow dish
Water
How to show growth from something that seems dead
I was preparing our Sunday dinner and had chopped up the carrots I saved the tops and showed J what they were like – he said they were gone and broken, they didn’t look like the carrots we had seen in the super market and as they didn’t have their ends they were broken for him.
Carrot top placed in a shallow dish with water ready to show new growth
I then put a top in the shallow dish and added some water and we took a picture – each day we took them off of the window sill and had a look.
After 2 days we had some shoots appearing
Within a couple of days the top has some small shoots growing out of the top.
1 week of growth
By the end of the week the carrot tops had little leaves.
This is great little experiment to show growth from dead things – one of the things that will appear on the news over the summer will be forest fires – as our climate warms up and becomes drier these unfortunately are becoming increasingly common, but they have always been part of nature’s cycle of life and what has always surprised me is the growth and replenishment of the environment after the fire and how rapid it is.
Come and join up with these amazing blogs for the Earth Day Blog Hop – visit each to see how we are celebrating and learning about Earth Day –
Teach Preschool ~ Ready.Set.Read ~ Living at the Whitehead’s Zoo ~ The Outlaw Mom Blog ~ The Golden Gleam ~ Inspiration Laboratories ~ Nurture Store ~ Experimenting Mom ~ Kids Stuff World ~ Artsy Craftsy Mom ~ Creativity My Passion ~ Imagination Soup ~ Rockabye Butterfly ~ Getting Messy with Miss Jessy ~ Mama Smiles ~ Let’s Lasso the Moon ~ Reading Confetti ~ The Educators’ Spin On It ~ Kitchen Counter Chronicles ~ De tout et de rien ~ The Wise Owl Factory Book a Day ~ Mommy and Me Book Club ~ Dirt and Boogers ~ Carrots Are Orange~ Toddler Approved ~ Imprints from Tricia ~ Smiling like Sunshine
HUbble, Bubble, Toil & Trouble
FOR HALLOWEEN!
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Robyn says
I didn’t realize you could do that with chopped off carrot tops! That is so cool- my boys would love to see that happen! thanks.
Roopa says
Love the idea of using carrot top to observe life and growth. Putti loves seeing the sprouts and I am sure will LOVE this one. Thanks for sharing!
Isil says
I love this experiment as you can observe the sprouts in a very short time.Great for little ones as they don’t have to wait too much to see the sprouting 🙂
Robyn says
Nice idea of using a root crop to demonstrate that some thing alive can grow from a thing that seems to be dead.
Rashmie @ Mommy Labs says
This is a really interesting as well as meaningful awareness activity to do with kids – of all ages. Encourages reflection, observation and throws up unique insight!
Going to do this with my daughter….
Thank you for participating, Cerys 🙂