Plant Care and Growth Measuring
Your child grows a bean from a dried one in the cupboard, waters it on a schedule that is hers, and cuts a paper strip to its height every morning.
- Age
- 5 to 8, best at 6
- Setup
- 2 min
- Play
- 5 min a day, for weeks
- Materials
- Household only
- Mess
- Low
- You
- Set it up, then leave
Activity KG-A048
What you need
Everything here is in the kitchen already. The one choice that decides how the fortnight goes is which seed, because they answer at very different speeds.
- Dried beans from the cupboardx6 Or: a packet of runner or broad bean seed. Or dried chickpeas, which are slower. Supermarket haricot, borlotti or butter beans sprout well, and six gives room for the two that do nothing. A root shows in three or four days and a shoot in six to eight at normal room temperature, which is about as fast as a real plant gets.
- Cress seeda teaspoon Or: mustard seed. Or a pinch of birdseed, which sprouts a surprising amount. Cress is up on day two and ready to cut in a week, so it carries the first week while the bean is still underground. Sowing both on the same morning is what stops the wait feeling empty.
- A clean jam jar and kitchen paperx1 jar Or: a clear plastic cup. Or a water bottle cut down to 10 cm. Line the jar with two sheets of kitchen paper, crumple more into the middle to press them against the glass, and slide the beans down between paper and glass. The root and the shoot are visible from the first day, which is the whole difference between this and a bean buried in a pot of soil.
- Paper strips, about 3 cm wideone a day Or: a till receipt cut lengthways. Or the long edge trimmed off a sheet of A4. Each morning, one strip cut to the exact height of the shoot and glued next to yesterday's. The row of strips becomes a chart with no numbers written anywhere, and a six year old can read the growth off it in a second.
- A ruler and a pencilx1 From about six the strip gets a number on it as well. Whole centimetres are plenty; the millimetres arrive by themselves once the daily difference gets interesting.
- A tablespoonx1 Or: a small jug with a line drawn on it. The watering wants to be a measured amount rather than a pour, so that too much and too little are both visible. Two tablespoons every other day keeps the paper damp without the beans standing in water.
How to set it up
- Fold two sheets of kitchen paper round the inside of the jar and crumple more into the middle to hold them against the glass.1 min
- Slide four beans down between the paper and the glass, spaced apart, about 3 cm up from the bottom.30 sec
- Pour two tablespoons of water in together and watch the paper darken as it takes it up.30 sec
- Scatter cress seed on a saucer of damp kitchen paper the same morning, so something is happening while the bean is still underground.1 min
- Stand both on a windowsill she walks past on the way to breakfast, rather than a shelf she has to remember.30 sec
What to say and what to do
Say
Two spoons today. It is your job, not mine.
Cut the strip where the top of the leaf is.
- Then leave the question alone. A plant that gets asked about twice a day stops being hers.
Do
- Hand over the watering completely, including the days it gets forgotten. A bean that droops on Thursday and comes back on Friday teaches the schedule better than a reminder ever does.
- Cut and glue the first three strips alongside her, then let the chart be hers to keep.
- Mark the start on the calendar. A fortnight reads completely differently when the days are being counted.
Let be
- A strip cut crooked or glued at a slant. The chart still shows the shape of the growth, which is all it is for.
- The morning nobody measured. One gap in the row is a fact about that week, and it can stay blank.
- The bean that never sprouts. One or two out of six usually do nothing, and that is the most ordinary thing about seeds.
What it looks like when it is working
- She checks the jar before anyone mentions it, usually first thing.
- He starts predicting, saying out loud how tall it will be before the strip is cut.
- The strips get compared to each other rather than only to the plant.
- She notices the shoot leaning towards the window and turns the jar round to see what happens.
What to expect at each age
At five
Waters happily and looks every day, and wants the measuring done alongside her. Reads the chart as taller and shorter rather than in centimetres.
Owning the schedule without a reminder comes a little later. At five the adult holds the routine and the child holds the plant, which is a fine division of labour.
Lasts 3 to 5 minutes a day
At six
Remembers the watering most days, cuts and glues the strip himself, and writes the number on it in whole centimetres. Starts asking why one bean did nothing.
Setting up a comparison on purpose, one jar in a cupboard and one on the sill, is what follows, and it usually begins as a question of his own.
Lasts 5 minutes a day, longer on the days the chart gets read back
At seven and eight
Runs the whole thing, keeps the chart in numbers, and sets up a second jar as a test. Works out the average growth a day and is annoyed when the plant disagrees.
Soil, pots and a herb kept going across a season are where this heads, and basil on the kitchen sill is the usual next thing.
Lasts 10 minutes a day, in bursts
When it goes sideways
Growing things is slow, and most of what goes wrong here is the calendar rather than anything anybody did.
Nothing has happened for four days
A bean spends its first three or four days putting a root down before anything shows at the top. The jar is working and there is nothing above the soil line to see.
Point at the bottom of the jar rather than the top. The white root against the glass is the first result, and it is there days before the shoot. Cress sown on the same morning covers this gap, because it is up on day two.
She has stopped watering it
The schedule has no visible consequence yet, so there is nothing tying the job to the plant.
Let it go one day dry and look at it together, then water it and look again next morning. A bean recovers easily from one dry day, and that recovery is what makes the schedule real.
The shoot has gone long, pale and floppy
Not enough light, so the plant is stretching for it. It is information rather than damage.
Move it to the brightest sill in the house and turn the jar a half turn every morning. Add the turning to her job, because the bend back towards the light over two days is the best thing this activity does.
The paper has gone mouldy
Too much water and not enough air, which is what topping up daily does rather than every other day.
Tip the standing water out, swap the paper, and go back to two tablespoons every other day. A jar that is damp rather than wet stays clean for a month.
Making it harder
Four rungs, each with a longer wait in it than the last. All of them run on a jam jar and a windowsill.
Cress on a saucer
- Ready when
- This is where everybody starts.
- What changes
- Cress seed on damp kitchen paper, kept damp by hand every morning.
- What is new
- A result that arrives tomorrow rather than now, which at this age is already a long wait.
A bean in a jar, measured daily
- Ready when
- She has kept the cress damp for a week without being asked twice.
- What changes
- Four beans against the glass, and a paper strip cut and glued each morning.
- What is new
- A fortnight of daily work before the thing is finished, and a chart that only makes sense looking back.
Two jars, one of them a test
- Ready when
- He runs the watering himself and reads his own chart.
- What changes
- A second jar treated differently on purpose: in a cupboard, or on a cold sill, or left dry.
- What is new
- Changing one thing and keeping everything else the same, which is the whole of how an experiment works.
Potted on, and kept alive
- Ready when
- She has finished one chart and wants to know what happens after it.
- What changes
- The strongest bean moved into soil in a pot, or basil sown for the kitchen, watered across a season.
- What is new
- Care with no end date, where the result is a plant that is still there in October.
Finish the chart on a day she picks, glue it up somewhere it stays, and plant the best bean in soil. Ending with the plant still alive is what makes the next one worth starting.
How to keep it safe
Seeds, water and a windowsill, so this comes down to which plants get eaten.
- Cress, mustard and basil are grown to be eaten, and eating them is half the pleasure. Keep the bean plant for looking at, and cook beans properly before they are food.
- Stand the jar back from the edge of the sill. Glass and water on a windowsill is the one thing here that actually breaks.
- Wash hands after the potting soil, once it gets as far as pots.
- Use a jar with no chips on the rim, or a clear plastic cup where the sill is somewhere busy.
Why this helps
From the guide The claims here follow our guide on how patience actually develops.
Almost everything else a six year old does gives its answer inside the sitting. A bean does not. The work, two tablespoons on Tuesday, is separated from the result, a shoot on Friday, by days in which nothing visible happens at all. Holding on to a job across that gap is a different skill from concentrating hard for twenty minutes, and it is what this one is actually for.
The paper strips are what make the slowness visible. A plant looks the same today as it did yesterday, which is why a child who only looks gives up on it by the weekend. A strip cut to the height and glued beside yesterday's turns invisible change into a staircase climbing across the page, and once growth is something with a shape, the daily job stops being a chore and becomes the way of finding out.
Skill practised: a job held across days, with the result recorded
It is a plant a child keeps alive, not a botany lesson. A six year old waters a bean because it is hers and it is doing something.
One a week, at your child's age
We publish one new activity a week at each age, in exactly this format. Lining a jam jar, paper against the glass and beans slid down the side, is a ten second job that is much clearer seen than described.
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Questions parents ask
Which seeds are fastest and most reliable?
Cress: up on day two, ready to cut and eat in a week, and it works on a saucer of damp kitchen paper. Beans are next, three or four days to a visible root and six to eight to a shoot above the rim, then a couple of centimetres a day for a fortnight, which is what makes them worth measuring. Basil is the slow one, five to ten days to come up and about six weeks to a plant worth picking, so it suits a child who has already finished a bean.
How often should she water it?
Two tablespoons every other day for a jam jar lined with kitchen paper. The aim is damp paper rather than standing water, and a small measured amount keeps both of those easy to see. In a pot of soil the rule gets simpler: water when the top of the soil is dry to a finger.
How long does the whole thing take?
About two weeks of daily measuring for a bean in a jar. Root at day three or four, shoot above the rim at day six to eight, then fast growth until the first proper leaves open and the bean itself has nothing left to give. That is the moment to pot it on or to finish the chart.
Nothing sprouted. What now?
Start again with beans from a new packet, put six in rather than three, and stand the jar somewhere warm rather than on a cold sill. Cupboard beans that have sat for years often will not go, and a jar in a chilly room can take twice as long as one in a warm kitchen. Sowing cress at the same time means something is always growing while the second attempt gets going.