You can feel it in Arkansas this week: cool mornings, early sunsets, and that first reach for a jacket. A chilly weekend just swept through, and forecasters said northern parts of the state could see near-frost conditions. On Sunday, Nov. 1, daylight saving time ends and the clocks fall back an hour, so the sun will be setting before many families finish supper.
For gardeners, shorter days mean the outdoor season is winding down. Around the winter solstice, Arkansas gets less than 10 hours of daylight. For young scientists, though, that's a great question to dig into: what does a plant actually do with light, and what happens when it doesn't get enough?
This week's lab answers that question with a few cups and seeds. Then we'll show you how to keep the garden growing indoors all winter.
What your kids will learn
Grades K–5
- What plants need to grow: light, water and air
- Watch seeds sprout and record changes in a daily growth journal
- Measure seedling height with a ruler and compare plants that get more or less light
- Notice how seedlings lean and grow toward the light
Grades 6–12
- Explain photosynthesis: how plants turn light energy into food
- Observe phototropism, the way stems bend toward a light source
- Design a controlled experiment that changes one variable, such as hours of light per day, and graph the results
- Investigate why too little light makes tall, pale, floppy seedlings (called etiolation)
This week's activity: the Light-or-Not Seedling Test
Try this with what you have at home. You'll need 3 clear plastic cups, potting soil, a handful of fast seeds (lettuce, radish or beans work well), a ruler, a cardboard box and a notebook.
- Plant. Fill three cups with moist soil and plant the same number of seeds (about 6) in each, at the same depth.
- Label your conditions. Cup A goes in your brightest window. Cup B goes in a dim corner of the room. Cup C goes in the window too, but under an upside-down box with a small hole cut in one side (an adult should do the cutting).
- Keep everything else the same. Same soil, same seeds, same water. Ask your kids: why does that matter? (That's a controlled variable!)
- Predict. Which cup will grow tallest? Which will look healthiest? Write it down.
- Measure daily. Record height, leaf color and which way the stems lean. Peek into Cup C to see what the seedlings do with that one beam of light.
- Conclude. After 10–14 days, compare. Kids are often surprised that the dim-corner seedlings can be tallest, yet pale and weak. That stretching is etiolation: the seedling is racing to find light.
Keep the experiment going all winter. Once your kids see what light does, the next question is obvious: can we give plants enough light indoors? Our LED Grow Light Plant Stand Science Kit turns a corner of your home into an indoor grow lab. It's a two-shelf stand (26½" tall × 28" long × 12" wide) with two 2 ft, 10-watt full-spectrum LED light bars mounted 10 inches above each shelf, plus curriculum and worksheets for your grade band emailed after purchase. Each shelf holds one standard 10×20 tray (trays are sold separately, and assembly is required).
Because the top and bottom shelves each have their own light, older kids can run a real controlled experiment, such as giving one shelf more hours of light per day than the other, and graph the difference.
Need seeds to fill those shelves? Our best-selling Heirloom Vegetable Seed Science Collection includes 30 heirloom varieties and about 5,000 seeds, with greens like Mixed Green Lettuce, Long Standing Spinach and Green Sprouting Broccoli that are fun to start under lights, plus germination supplies and its own grade-level curriculum and worksheets. When spring arrives, you'll have plenty left for the outdoor garden.
Join the growing community
Every kit comes with an invitation to Aardvark's Seed Planting For Little Hands, our private group for families using our kits. Share your Light-or-Not results, post a photo of your grow shelf on a gray January morning, and swap tips with other families. Young growers from the Ozarks and the Delta to the hills of West Virginia and the deserts of Arizona are learning together, and your kids' discoveries help everyone.
Arkansas homeschool families have been in the news this year as the state updated its Education Freedom Account rules under the LEARNS Act. Whatever your learning plan looks like, a hands-on winter science project gives kids something to look forward to every morning.
Bring the garden indoors this winter
Short days are coming. Your kids' garden can keep growing anyway.
