Hands-on Learning About Plants In Our Montessori Classroom

💕 Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links at no cost to you. It means I get a commission if you decide to purchase through my links. Thank you for your support.

As Maria Montessori said, “Nothing should be given to the brain that is not first given to the hand”.  We embrace hands-on learning in our Montessori homeschool classroom. I use every opportunity to make learning practical. My 4-yo Blossom told me that she would like to plant something in our garden.

Truth be told at this stage our garden is non-existent, however, we started looking into the life cycle of the plant and learn about seed germination. The whole Plant Unit I plan contains several topics: seed germination, parts of the seed, parts of a plant, life cycle of a plant, and needs of the plant.

Today I am going to share with you hands-on simple science experiments we conducted that included planting seeds, observing the process of seed germination, the life cycle of a plant.

Hands-on Learning About Plants

Teaching preschooler sequencing process of seed germination is great for developing their logical thinking. Along with that, they pick up new vocabulary: germinationseed, roots, shoot, seedling.

To observe seed germination and to create a hands-on science experience, we gathered various types of seeds – beans, corn, herbs, and flower bulbs. We planted them using different methods to make it more engaging, which also allowed the child to make comparisons, observe, and learn to pay attention to details.

Conducting our experiment, we

  • planted bean and corn seeds into a small clear jar by placing a couple of crunched paper towels and pouring some water inside to make it wet. It created a moist environment for the seeds to start germinating. This allowed the perfect opportunity for the child to see clearly every stage of the process.
seed experiment Montessori nature
  • planted bean and corn seeds into a jar with soil – Blossom filled a small jar with soil, watered it and planted seeds. There were at least 4-5 bean seeds. Some seeds took longer to germinate. After about 7 days we scooped them out and had a close look. We had one example of each part of the transformation – from seed to seedling. So cool, ah! This was wonderful to use for match-up hands-on activity later.
learning about seed germination Montessori Nature Blog
  • planted Daffodil bulbs into a glass vase. Blossom found shells and marbles to place on the bottom and pushed bulbs to rest on them allowing space for roots to grow.
Learning about a plant Montessori Nature Blog
  • planted herbs into an ice-block container. This was to compare the sizes of various seeds and practice fine motor skills.
sawing seeds Montessori nature blog

Every aspect of the learning process incorporated certain skills for little hands to practice aside from doing an actual job of planting seeds, like

  • water pouring – coordination skills
  • spreading small seeds along the surface of the soil – fine motor practice

I often emphasize the importance of doing Montessori work that requires a few days for children to complete. It teaches them a very important lesson – quality takes time to achieve. It also teaches them to be patient and takes the excitement of seeing the final result to a whole new level.

It took about 5-7 days for seeds to start to germinate and grow into a seedling. Daffodil bulbs are still in the process of growing and every day there is significant progress that can be observed.

This is a perfect opportunity for children to learn parts of a plant since it takes a while for the plant to grow from bulb to flower, so the child learns each part in the process by repeating it every time they see it.

Learning about a plant Montessori Nature Blog @

I always encourage Blossom to do some form of reflection after we explore a unit. This time we used pantomime to do a “seed dance” – we pretended to be a seed that pushes roots down and little shoot up through the soil and transforms into a little seedling. She also did a recording of her observation in the form of a drawing.

reflecting on learning Montessori Nature Blog

After that, we are going to learn about the Lifecycle of a plant using printables I made. You can check them out here.

. . . .

YOu Might Also Enjoy These Resources On Nature-Based Learning and Living

Must-Read Books About Nature Learning and Living

exploring nature children's books

  About Anastasia. Anastasia is a former Early Childhood Teacher and the founder of Montessori Nature, a blog about Montessori - inspired and Nature-based explorations. She taught in a Montessori setting for 10 years and has been practicing the Montessori way of learning and living for the last 20 years. She loves designing engaging educational printables for children. Browse Anastasia's educational resources on Teachers Pay Teachers.


3 thoughts on “Hands-on Learning About Plants In Our Montessori Classroom”

  1. Please what is in that big glass jar in top? It seems to have very strong root and stem (bigger than bean) but I don’t recognize the leafs to identify it.

Comments are closed.

Scroll to Top