Kids Science with Jellybeans

After reading, My Garden by Kevin Henkes we decided to do an experiment to find what kinds of beans will grow and what kind of beans will not grow. In My Garden, a little girl helps her mother tend a garden. She dreams of her own garden. In her garden, bunnies don't eat the plants; they get eaten because they are chocolate bunnies. She dreams up a garden where jellybeans grow into jellybean bushes and seashells grow shell plants. This is a wonderful book for enticing the imaginations of young gardeners.
While the book does provide hope for producing a sea shell garden, we had to do a little experimenting ourselves. We posed the question, "Will a jellybean grow a jellybean bush?"

We decided to try and sprout two different kinds of beans- navy beans and jelly beans. We talked about the differences in the beans. Mommy cut them apart so we could examine both beans. We even looked at them with a magnifying glass. (I had not thought ahead that a preschooler would not understand how to use a magnifying glass. It was a very teachable moment and my four year old, loved experimenting with the magnifying glass.)

We then put beans into plastic bags with a moist paper towel.
We will check back to see which ones sprout. Mommy is holding out hope for a jellybean bush!