Skill shelf · growing, watching and working out why · 1 activity

Nature and Discovery

One long activity: a bean sprouted against the side of a jar, watered on a schedule that belongs to the child, and measured every morning with a strip of paper.

Dried beans out of the cupboard go down the inside of a jam jar, between the glass and a lining of kitchen paper, so the root and the shoot are visible from the first day rather than buried in a pot of soil. A root shows in three or four days and a shoot in six to eight. Cress sown on the same morning is up on day two and ready to cut in a week, which is what carries the first week while the bean is still underground.

The measuring is the part that lasts. Each morning one paper strip is cut to the exact height of the shoot and glued beside yesterday's, and the row of strips becomes a chart with no numbers written on it anywhere. A six year old reads the growth off it in a second. From about six the strips start getting a number as well, and whole centimetres are plenty.

It runs about five minutes a day for several weeks, and the watering has to be hers, including the mornings she would rather not. That is most of what makes it worth doing, and it is why it also sits under responsibility and daily habits.

The one

Suits five to eight, best at six. Two minutes to set up, then five minutes a morning for as long as the bean keeps going.

• 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

Six beans, because two of them will do nothing, and that is normal rather than a mistake anybody made.

Other places a child watches and works out why

Close looking and cause and effect run through a lot of this library without ever being called science. These five are the nearest thing to it and are worth knowing about from here: a tin that throws a circle one way round and a rectangle the other, ten identical pots that stop being identical in the hand, a line of shades that turns out to have an order, water that does what water does, and a ball that goes exactly where the breath sends it.

• Water Pouring and Transfer Your child pours water from one small jug into another, and then back again, and again, until the table is wet. 3 min · 5 to 10 min · household only
• Color Shade Grading Your child lays a handful of squares in a line, darkest at one end and palest at the other. 2 min · 5 to 10 min · household only
• Straw Blow Ping Pong Race Your child blows a ping pong ball across the table through a straw, and races it to a strip of tape at the far end. no setup · under 5 min · household only
• Shape Shadow Match Your child stands a solid shape in a beam of light and works out which of the outlines traced on the paper its shadow belongs to. 2 min · 10 to 20 min · household only
• Weighted Pod Sorting Your child picks up two pots that look exactly alike, decides which one is heavier, and keeps going until all ten are in pairs. 15 min, once · 5 to 10 min · household only

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