Simple Science – Sprout Heads & Sunshine

Well, we had great fun with our Egg Cress heads nearer Easter time… but to be honest, you don’t just have to do cress heads (or sprout heads as known in some areas) JUST at Easter. It is a simple science experiment that you can do all year round – to investigate how things grow. It is amazing how “warmth and water” only, will make a seed burst with life (we did an experiment where we withdrew all light from a bean and it still grew – check out our Bean Sprouting Activity here). Anyway, we were sitting at the breakfast table, sorting through seed packets and the kids wanted to grow some more sprouts… so we did. Why not! It is SO SO SO easy to do. And then I thought, why not show the kids how the plants react to sunlight……

For this Growing Experiment you will need:

• a container (we had a soldier egg cup)
• some tissue paper or cotton wool
• some cress seeds or sprout seeds (anything that grows SUPER fast is great)
• a little water
• a sunny window ledge or similar

Your experiment:

1) Place your tissue paper or cotton wool into your container and make it wet/ damp.

2) Add your seeds.

3) Keep an eye on it and make sure that the seeds are damp, but not soggy.

Once your seeds have grown (in our case it was about 3-4 days), you can have fun with the sun!

Turn your egg cup on it’s side (a damp cotton wool is important here, else you will have water spillage). What can you observe happening after just 2-3 hours and then after a full day?

I love how you can see the cress literally STRETCHING towards the sun!!

We then turned the soldier to face the other way.. by lunch time the hair was already “half way” across his face.. by evening time it was pointing in the other direction.

Here is our ONE soldier, with different “cress hair”, based on which way it was facing.

Such a fun way to explore the sunshine and how much our plants love to grow towards the sun!