Material shelf · beans, cress and outdoor ground · 1 activity

Things from Outside

The growing one: six dried beans and a teaspoon of cress in a jam jar, watched and measured for a fortnight.

The seeds come out of the kitchen cupboard. Supermarket haricot, borlotti or butter beans sprout well, and six of them 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. Runner or broad bean seed from a packet does the same, and dried chickpeas do it more slowly.

Sow cress on the same morning. 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, and that is what stops the wait feeling empty. Mustard seed does the same job, and so does a pinch of birdseed.

The jar is what makes this different from a bean buried in a pot. Line a clean jam 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, where the root and the shoot are visible from the first day. A clear plastic cup or a water bottle cut down to 10 cm works the same way. Measuring is a paper strip cut each morning to the exact height of the shoot and glued next to yesterday's, which makes a chart a six year old can read in a second with no numbers written anywhere.

What you pick up outside substitutes into other activities too. Clean pebbles are the heavy filler in the weighted pods, and short grass beds a pair of tin stilts in slightly, which is exactly what a first go wants.

The one that grows

The setup is one morning and the activity is the fortnight after it, a few minutes each day.

• 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. 2 min · 5 min a day, for weeks · household only

It runs on a windowsill, which is why it is the one that works in a flat with no garden.

Five more that work outside

These are filed under other materials, and each of them says on its own page that outdoors is the better place for it: chalk on a patio instead of tape indoors, a kerb or a line of paving slabs instead of a taped line, short grass under a pair of tin stilts, and a bar of soap carved where the shavings can go on the ground.

• Walking the Balance Line Your child walks the length of a strip of tape stuck to the floor, slowly, and then turns round and walks back. 2 min · under 5 min · household only
• Painters Tape Floor Balance Track Your child walks a line of tape stuck to the floor without stepping off it, then does it again carrying something. 4 min · 10 to 20 min · one substitute needed
• Balance Beam Coin Carry Your child walks a taped line heel to toe carrying a small stack of coins on a saucer, and discovers that the only way across is slowly. 2 min · 5 to 10 min · household only
• Bucket Stilts Balance Track Your child stands on two upturned tins, holds a rope in each hand to keep them under her feet, and walks a taped line across the garden. 15 min, once · 10 to 20 min · household only
• Soap Carving and Safe Whittling Your child cuts a shape out of a bar of soap with a blunt tool, slowly, and the shavings go everywhere. 5 min · 20 to 40 min · household only

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