Looking for a creative theme for your child’s next birthday party? Planting seeds provides a hands-on, fun-filled activity for your party guests, and turns into a great take-home treat as well!

Materials:

• Soil

• Round Peat Pots

• Small Clear Plastic Tumbler Glasses

• Pea Seeds

• Markers

• Popsicle Sticks with inches marked off (leave about three inches before you start marking)

• Clear plastic bags

• Ribbon

Here’s What You Do:

1) Gather your party guests in a circle and encourage a discussion about gardening by asking them questions:

• What do you need to grow a plant?
• What types of plants might you find in a garden?
• Why are bugs helpful to plants?

2) Next, have guests decorate their popsicle sticks by coloring in the areas between the inches. Let the children know that this is how they will be able to measure the growth of their pea plant.

3) Then, send each child to his/her own planting station.

4) At each planting station, have a bucket of soil available, a cup of seeds, peat pots, clear plastic cups and a watering can. Help guests fill up their pot with soil, plant the seed, water it (make sure the peat pot is in the plastic cup) and then place their popsicle stick in the soil.

5) Write the birthday guest’s name on a clear plastic bag, place the pot inside and tie it off with a bow. You can add stickers or a lollipop to the bag for an additional treat!

Challenge for older kids: The plant world is full of really big words. But, you can turn those words into a lot of fun! Write out the letters of some of the words below on flash cards. Put the birthday party guests into teams and hand them a deck of the flash cards. Have teams race as they try to put the flash cards in the right order to spell the words!

• Germination – the process of a plant emerging from a seed and starting to grow
• Photosynthesis – the process that allows plants to take energy from the sun to make sugars
• Embryophytes – the scientific name for common plants
• Chlorophyll – the pigment that helps make plants green

In addition to being a great birthday party activity, it is also reinforcing the lessons that your children learn in school, which is very important. This activity helps meet the following South Carolina Department of Education Curriculum Standards:

• K-2.1 Recognize what organisms need to stay alive (including air, water, food, and shelter).
• 1-2.1 Recall the basic needs of plants (including air, water, nutrients, space, and light) for energy and growth.
• 1-2.4 Summarize the life cycle of plants (including germination, growth, and the production of flowers and seeds).
• 1-4.6 Exemplify Earth materials that are used for building structures or for growing plants.
• 3-1.5 Use tools safely, accurately, and appropriately when gathering specific data.

Robin Berlinsky is the Director of Education at the Children’s Museum of the Lowcountry and a former educator of 15 years in Charleston County schools.