On 22nd April 2012 it will be the 42nd Annual Earth Day – a day to increase awareness and appreciation of the Earth’s Natural Environment. Working in Conservation for many years as a Field Biologist and Environmental Educator I am really pleased to be able to join in this blog hop organised by Rashmie over on Mommy Labs this month in celebration of this day.
As J and T are so young I wanted something that would catch their interest as well as teach them a little about the Earth’s Natural Environment and found the inspiration whilst cooking and planting seeds recently. The world comes in cycles and one of the things I love about nature is how new growth can sprout from things that seem to be dead.
We’ve been looking at growing a lot recently – we watched some water bead grow, we’ve grown passengers for our egg carton choo choo train and planted some seeds (the cress is the only one that has grown so far I have my fingers crossed that more will) so this seemed a great way to show growth from something that seemed dead – carrot tops.
What you need to show growth from something that seems dead
The top end of a chopped up carrot
A shallow dish
How to show growth from something that seems dead
I was preparing our Sunday dinner and had chopped up the carrots I saved the tops and showed J what they were like – he said they were gone and broken, they didn’t look like the carrots we had seen in the super market and as they didn’t have their ends they were broken for him.
I then put a top in the shallow dish and added some water and we took a picture – each day we took them off of the window sill and had a look.
Within a couple of days the top has some small shoots growing out of the top.
By the end of the week the carrot tops had little leaves.
This is great little experiment to show growth from dead things – one of the things that will appear on the news over the summer will be forest fires – as our climate warms up and becomes drier these unfourtunately are becoming increasingly common, but they have always been part of nature’s cycle of life and what has always surprised me is the growth and replenishment of the environment after the fire and how rapid it is.