Watching seeds grow is an exciting experience! This week’s STREAM Storytime at Crestwood on Saturday, May 10 at 10:30 AM, we will be starting an experiment called Seeds in a Jar, or Germinating Seeds. To germinate is to get seeds to begin to grow. When seeds become moist, the hard outer shell softens and allows the plant inside the seed to begin growing. Placing seeds inside a wet paper towel can help them stay moist enough to begin germination.
It’s also important that the seed germinating in the paper towel also gets sunlight. The sun helps keep the wet paper towel warm, which helps the seed to grow. When the seed begins to grow leaves, the sun will help the plant continue to grow. Plants need the sun to create food for itself so it can grow big and strong! This is called photosynthesis.
Librarian Miss Nancy hosts STREAM Storytime at Crestwood. She has been germinating seeds and has a snap pea and a sunflower seed that have begun to grow! Come visit and see how these seeds are doing and learn how to make your own seeds grow.
This week’s hands-on project after the storytime is a mini greenhouse. Miss Nancy has a sample greenhouse with seeds that are already starting to grow. A greenhouse is good for growing seeds because it helps to control the environment the seeds are growing in. A greenhouse controls the temperature of the soil and stays warm, which is better for seeds to grow in. When you water plants inside the greenhouse, it helps the plants stay moist longer, which helps them grow too.
If you want some seeds of our own, you can borrow seeds from your Seed Library. All three Yonkers Public Library have a Seed Library with a lot of flower seeds and herb seeds to choose from.
Crestwood Library also has a garden outside where we host gardening programs, and Will Library and Riverfront Library also have gardening programs this month. Check out the programs on our calendar here!
You can read more about gardening with these amazing books available in our catalog:
- My Garden by Kevin Henkes
- Garden Time by Jill McDonald-Gomez (Part of the Hello World Series of simple non-fiction for very young readers)
- Planting a Rainbow by Lois Ehlert
- We Garden Together! : Projects To Learn, Grow, And Connect With Nature
If you’re looking to learn more at home and get some other great ideas for gardening, check out the websites Teach Beside Me and Little Sprouts Learning.
Science is all around us! Come enjoy learning so many simple concepts every week at STREAM Storytime. We’ve learned about magnets, painting with Skittles, snow, water wheels, the human heart, how to build a sturdy house, and much more.
Nancy Wissman is a part-time Children’s Librarian at Crestwood Library. She is especially excited about bringing science to Crestwood with the Saturday STREAM storytime, which combines her love of story reading and storytelling with her new passion for science. Nancy has been a librarian for over 30 years, working in several libraries in different library departments, but most enjoys connecting children with literacy.