A friend of mine came up with a fun and educative activity to run during workshops about saving, sowing and growing veges from seed. It is great for teaching seed recognition and, with minor alterations, I have also used it as an activity for a workshop about vegetable families.
The idea is to collect a series of seeds, these may be commercially produced or from your own garden and then pack them off into separate containers labelled from 1 to whatever, making a list of which seeds are in what numbered container. The containers I used are 75ml recyclable plastic containers with lids, quite often used by Chinese restaurants for takeaway sauce containers. I bought them in our local “El Cheapo” shop at a cost of $2 for 15 containers.
I use 20 different seeds but you could use more or less depending on your needs. Next put together a list which has the name of the vegetable the seed in each container belongs to and the vegetable family as well, if you are covering that too. When you have the list in place, develop a second list where the numbers are distributed randomly on the sheet, then delete the numbers. If you don’t do that somebody will twig that they can get everything right just by numbering from 1 to 20 down the page!
When the activity is to go ahead, place all of the numbered seed containers around a table, and give every one of the attendees a copy of the random sheet with the numbers removed and a pen or pencil. You, of course, will retain an original sheet with the numbers consecutively down the page.
Instruct everyone that they are to open each container and identify the seed within, using their sight, smell, feel and even taste if they have to, then enter the number of the container against the corresponding name of the seed on the sheet. Once everyone has completed their sheets, read out the correct vegetable for each number (or ask what everyone got first) with each correct vege the attendee gets a point. If you want you can offer a prize of some description for the attendee with the most points.
Last time I ran this activity I offered a copy of Jackie French’s “Backyard Sustainability” which I had picked up at a book sale for $2. It seemed to go over pretty well. Or you could offer a seed pack, some produce or whatever would be appropriate for the workshop you are running.
I have run this a number of times and it has generally been regarded as fun by the participants and helped them with their seed identification skills as well as giving them an understanding of how plants within the same family can have a similar looking seed.
The master sheet and participant’s sheet which I used can be downloaded here as an example or you can develop your own.
