How Seeds Travel

Discuss the information below with your student and use the prepared files to make a minit book about seeds.

How Seeds Travel Booklet

How Seeds Travel Cards

Miss Rumphius was too sick one year to plant lupines, but they grew anyway!  Does your student remember how this happened?  She says that the birds and wind must've helped her out.  Discuss how birds "sow" seeds (the seeds don't digest and when the birds

Animals
-birds help some fruits like the cherry by eating the fruit around the seed
-birds also swallow berries whole and the seeds pass through their digestive tracts
-other animals with fur carry seeds that stick to them; as the animal travels, so does the seed (like a hitch hiker!)
-seeds even travel in the mud stuck to animals' feet
-some animals, like raccoons, carry the fruit of trees away from the tree; when the animal is finished with the fruit, the seeds get planted in a new area

Wind
-when the wind blows, the seeds move! 
-the wind especially helps lightweight seeds travel

Humans
-of course, humans help seeds travel because they can sow them wherever they want them to grow

Extra Activity-- Fuzzy Socks
This will not only help your student understand how seeds stick to animal fur and travel, it will also give you an opportunity for seed identification and planting. 

Put an old pair of fuzzy socks on over your child's shoes and go for a nature walk in a grassy or woodsy area where there are a lot of plants growing. When you get home, examine the different hitch-hiking seeds that the stuck to the socks, draw pictures of the different seeds (for your nature journal, lapbook, or notebook), and try to identify them. You can also sort and plant them in different pots according to type, then observe what plants grow.