Here's a fact many Arkansas gardeners don't know: if you own a home or land in the state, you can have your soil tested for free. The University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture runs free soil testing through its Marianna Soil Test Lab, and its soil page links to instructions for sending in a sample.
That makes fall a great time for a soil unit. Gardens are winding down, the ground is easy to dig, and a soil test now gives you months to plan a spring garden. It's also a hands-on way to explore something every farmer knows: what's under the plants matters as much as the seeds.
And your family is far from alone in learning this way. A new University of Arkansas annual report on the state's Education Freedom Accounts counted 16,541 homeschooled students in the program in 2025–26, part of 44,524 students in total. That's a lot of kitchen-table scientists.
What Your Kids Will Learn
Grades K–5
- What soil is made of, and how sand, silt and clay look and feel different
- What makes a test "fair": changing only one thing at a time
- Observing and comparing how seeds grow in different growing media
- Recording results with drawings and simple charts
Grades 6–12
- Soil structure, moisture retention and aeration
- Independent, dependent and controlled variables
- Measuring germination speed, plant height and root development
- Graphing data and drawing evidence-based conclusions
This Week's Activity: The Backyard Soil Jar Lab
All you need is a clear jar with a lid, a ruler, two plastic cups and a little digging.
- Dig a sample. With an adult handling the shovel or trowel, dig down a few inches in your yard or garden and collect about two cups of soil. Pick out rocks, roots and sticks. Wash hands afterward.
- Feel it first. Rub a pinch of damp soil between your fingers. Gritty means sand, smooth and floury means silt, sticky means clay. Write down your guess about which one your yard has most of.
- Fill the jar. Fill a clear jar about one-third full with soil, add water until it's nearly full, and add a drop of dish soap to help the particles separate. Close the lid tightly.
- Shake and wait. Shake hard for 2 to 3 minutes, then set the jar on a shelf. Sand settles within a minute or two, silt over the next few hours, and clay can take a day or more.
- Measure the layers. The next day, measure each layer with a ruler. Older students can divide each layer by the total height to estimate the percent of sand, silt and clay. Was your finger-feel guess right?
- Run a water test. Poke a few holes in the bottoms of two cups. Fill one with yard soil and one with store-bought potting mix. Over a bowl, pour the same amount of water into each and measure how much drains out after five minutes. Which one holds more water for roots?
Next comes the big question: which soil helps seeds grow best? That's exactly what our Soil Science Experiment Kit (4 Pots) is built to answer. It includes four 3-inch peat pots, traditional potting mix, expandable coconut coir pellets and two seed varieties chosen for fast germination, so kids can plant the same seed in different media and different seeds in the same medium. Sprouting typically begins in 3–7 days. You pick Grades K–5 or 6–12 at checkout, and the curriculum (five lessons) and worksheets, including a planning sheet, a side-by-side growth chart and a reflection or lab report with graph, are emailed after purchase. No prior teaching experience is required.
Planning ahead for spring? The Raised Garden Bed Plant Science Kit includes a 6 × 3 × 1 ft galvanized steel bed, peat pots, seed-starting soil, five seed varieties and a seed-to-harvest curriculum. Filling the bed takes about 18 cubic feet of additional garden soil, which is a good place to put this fall's soil lessons to work.
Join the Growing Community
Every kit purchase includes an invitation to Aardvark's Seed Planting For Little Hands, our private support group for students and families using our kits. Share a photo of your soil jar layers or your four sprouting pots, compare results, and get help when an experiment surprises you. Young growers in Arkansas, West Virginia and Arizona are all digging in this fall.
