Gather:

1. •    Dry bean seeds as used in previous activities
   

2. •    Paper towels
   

3. •    Plastic wrap and paper plates, or plastic bags
   

Explore:

Wet two or three paper towels until damp, not dripping wet. Lay the towels flat. Place enough beans for all the children on half of the towel. Fold the top over, creating a sandwich with the beans inside. Slip the paper towels into a plastic bag and close, or onto a paper plate and cover with plastic wrap.

Depending on the temperature, the beans should start to swell and a root start to form as early as 24 to 48 hours later. Add new dry beans each day, over the period of a week to 10 days. Or you can also do a complete new batch every day, depending on how many you need. Continue to keep the paper towels moist. If they start to get moldy, replace the paper towel with a fresh one and rinse the beans.

Allow the children to view the seeds at the end and put them in a sequence from youngest to oldest. The youngest beans will just have a root breaking through, the older ones will have a leaf showing, and finally the oldest beans should have long roots and fully formed leaves. The fleshy part of the bean supplies food to the new plant. There are two and they are called cotyledons. See the cotyledons are still attached to the stem of the oldest plant below.