Did your family feel it on Sunday? The clocks fell back on November 1, and now the sun sets around 5:13 p.m. in North Little Rock. Today, November 3, central Arkansas gets about 10 hours and 41 minutes of daylight. By the end of the month that drops to about 10 hours, and on December 21 it bottoms out at roughly 9 hours and 49 minutes.
Cold is coming, too. The National Weather Service in Little Rock lists November 10 as Little Rock's average first freeze, and freezes usually arrive even earlier in the Ozark and Ouachita Mountains. The University of Arkansas Cooperative Extension's November garden guide still suggests planting salad greens this month, and checking indoor plants for pests.
Shorter, colder days don't have to mean the end of your homeschool garden. They're actually the perfect setup for one of the best plant science questions there is: what happens to a plant when it doesn't get enough light?
Sources: Sunrise-sunset.org, North Little Rock (72116); NWS Little Rock frost and freeze information; UA Cooperative Extension November Garden Guide
What your kids will learn
Grades K–5
- What plants need to grow: light, water and air
- How to watch seeds sprout and record changes in a daily growth journal
- How to measure seedling height with a ruler and compare plants
- What happens to seedlings when they get more or less light
Grades 6–12
- Photosynthesis: how plants turn light energy into food
- Phototropism: how seedlings bend and grow toward a light source
- Etiolation: why too little light makes tall, pale, "leggy" seedlings
- Designing a controlled experiment that changes one variable, such as hours of light per day, and graphing the results
This week's activity: the light vs. dark sprout race
This experiment uses things you probably already have, and kids see a dramatic difference in just a few days.
You'll need: about 20 seeds of one kind (a packet of radish, lettuce or bean seeds works well), paper towels, two clear plastic cups or small dishes, water, a ruler, a sunny windowsill, a dark cupboard and a notebook.
- Ask a question and predict. "Will seeds in the dark grow faster, slower or the same as seeds in the light?" Have everyone write down a guess.
- Set up two identical cups. Line each with a damp (not dripping) folded paper towel and place 10 seeds on top. Same seeds, same water, same cup. That's your fair test.
- Change just one thing. Put one cup on the sunniest windowsill and the other in a dark cupboard at the same room temperature. Light is your one variable.
- Check every day for 7 days. Keep the towels damp. Record how many seeds sprouted, the height of the tallest sprout, and its color.
- Measure and graph. Younger kids can draw the sprouts each day. Older kids can make a line graph of height over time for both cups.
- Compare and explain. The dark-cupboard sprouts often shoot up tall, thin and yellowish while they search for light. Ask: which sprouts look healthier, and why?
- Turn the window cup. Notice how the window sprouts lean toward the glass. Turn the cup around and check again tomorrow.
Ready to beat the short days? A windowsill in an Arkansas winter only gets so much sun. Our LED Grow Light Plant Stand Science Kit gives your kids their own indoor grow lab: a two-shelf stand (26½" tall × 28" long × 12" wide) with two 2-foot full-spectrum LED light bars mounted 10" above each shelf, plus curriculum and worksheets for your grade band, emailed after purchase. Each shelf holds one standard 10×20 microgreens tray (trays are sold separately), and the stand needs a little assembly, which is a fun project in itself. With lights on your own schedule, kids can test one shelf against the other and run their light experiments all winter long.
Need seeds to get started? Our Surprise Herb or Vegetable Seed Germination Science Kit comes with one surprise packet of seeds chosen from 50 popular herbs and vegetables, plus K–5 curriculum and observation worksheets. Part of the fun is identifying the mystery seed by its shape, size and color.
Join the growing community
Every kit comes with an invitation to our Facebook group, Aardvark's Seed Planting For Little Hands, where kids and parents share progress photos, ask questions and get help with anything they need. Post your light-vs.-dark sprout race results and see how they compare with young growers across Arkansas, West Virginia and Arizona. Arizona kids are planting outdoors right now while Arkansas kids move indoors, so there's always someone growing something new.
Keep your homeschool growing all winter
- LED Grow Light Plant Stand Science Kit: $200.00, with K–5 or 6–12 curriculum and worksheets
- Surprise Herb or Vegetable Seed Germination Science Kit: $15.00, with K–5 curriculum and worksheets
