If the project is just for a few weeks and you are not expecting it to produce fruit or actual flowers I'd suggest Nasturtiums. Of everything I have ever sown they grew the fastest. Also the seeds are big enough that the kids can handle them easily (like peas)

I'd vote for marigolds.

The first thing I ever grew from seed was marigolds and they were relatively easy.

Plus, then the kids can all take a flower home for Mother's Day =:)

Thanks!!!

Great advice. I have both

Karen

If you want something they can eat plant Radish. A friend in the business plants 10 acres of radish every 3 weeks. His license plate on his car is RADISH. Al

We used to grow broad (fava) and runner beans in glass jam jars. You make a roll of blotting paper (can you still get that?) and put it into the jar. You place the bean between the paper and the wall of the jar - if the roll is stiff enough the bean will sit half way up the side of the jar. You add enough water to damp the paper and set the whole thing in the windo.(No grow lights in school). The children can then watch as first the radicle and then the stem begin to grow. If you want to grow the plants on they need to be potted into compost or soil after they have some true leaves. The link shows the methods and uses kitchen towel rather than blotting paper.

The big advantage of this method is that the kids see the whole process of gemination, not just the shoots emerging from the soil.

Here is a link that might be useful: This is how we did it.

thanks so much!

Wow! Flora that is a great link. Parents and teachers should all download that one. Al

When I was about four years old my grandmother got me hooked on growing from seed by taking a mason jar with some soil and slipping some beans and corn down between the soil and the glass. I could see the seed swell and sprout and become a seedling. There was a lesson about 'monocotyledons' and 'dicotyledons' there too but since my grandmother never learned how to spell her name she probably didn't use those words when showing me what happened.

Some years ago myself and someone else on one of these forums suggested schoolteachers should do like the cooking shows do and start the finished product ahead of time so that when the preparation and sprouting and growing was running into time constraints the finished product could be taken out and displayed. We would appear to have failed but there is no way of knowing I suppose.