Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Homemade Plantable Paper (AKA Seed Bombs)

One of the homemade presents that the girls made for Christmas were these colorful pieces of plantable paper (also known as "seed bombs").  They make a cute holiday gift and make planting flowers really easy (just put them on the ground, sprinkle with soil, make sure they get enough water and soon flowers will appear).  This was a great way to incorporate two of the topics we've been learning about in Homeschool Kindergarten - seeds and recycling.  Here's what we did..



To make our seed paper colorful, we recycled construction paper.  The girls tore up red and green paper into small pieces.

We soaked them briefly in water (maybe soaking overnight would have been better but the kids were impatient and they were going into the food processor anyway).

I had to add a bit more water to get the paper to turn into a pulp in the food processor. 

 The girls helped me use a paper towel to remove the excess moisture from the pulp.  Then we put in some poppy seeds (which were the only flower seeds we had on hand), and a bit of white glue (Elmer's) and the twins mixed it up.

The original plan was to use silicone molds to make the seed bombs into fun shapes but that just didn't work out.  Instead the girls rolled balls out of the paper pulp / seed mixture (it was surprisingly like playdoh), and then flattened them out so they would dry faster.  We blotted out still more moisture using paper towels and then put them on an over rack to dry (which only took a couple hours). 

After our plantable paper had dried, we put it into a Christmas tin along with the flower seed label/instructions and it made a cute present for a grandma who loves to garden.  What a fun homemade gift this was to make!




1 comment:

  1. Good post, Nothing is better than gifting something which you actually made yourself. Grandma surely gonna love it

    ReplyDelete

I love getting comments! No spam, please.