To Seedball or Not to Seedball, That is the Pollinator’s Future!

  • Location
    Thousand Oaks, California
  • Status
    Complete
  • Age Level
    8 to 10 Years

The Problem

The Roots and Shoots Campaign that my 2023-2024 class has decided to start this school year actually is the seventh-year continuation and addition onto the campaigns that my 2015-2016, 2016-2017, 2017-2018, 2019-2020, 2021-2022, 2022-2023 classes began - that of a flourishing Monarch Waystation. This year's class would like to continue to build upon my previous classes’ vision by not only incorporating other native plants to attract other types of butterflies, especially those which flourish while the Monarch migrates north and or south of our garden, but would also like to inspire the creation of other Monarch enthusiasts through the gifting of “seed balls” to our classmates.

Our Plan

My 2016-2017, 2017-2018, 2021-2022, and 2022-2023 classes learned that seed balls made gardening easy, fun, and accessible. They learned that seed balls grow endangered wildflowers needed by pollinators, protect seeds from wind, birds, squirrels, and other critters, and has easy dispersal for more uniform coverage. So, each class hand-rolled approximately 1,000 seed balls and shared them with their families and friends by distributing the seed balls with planting directions (the “guerilla” method of tossing the seed balls while hiking was the most popular to write about!) to entire school to take home to plant in their gardens. All of my 2023-2024 class got to take these seed balls home as second graders and came into my third grade class at the beginning of this year not only wanting to make more seed balls, but are also excited to educate our school community about the continued need to advocate for pollinators. So, this year’s class’s plan of action is to not only make more seed balls to share with our school community but to also complete a digital seedball handbook on Book Creator about our garden and the essential components which make it a sustainable benefit for pollinators to share with our school community and to personally deliver the seed ball packets to their classmates.

Themes Addressed

  • term icon
    Community
  • term icon
    Invasive Species
  • term icon
    Pollinators
  • term icon
    Reasons for Hope

The Benefit

  • term icon
    People
  • term icon
    Animals
  • term icon
    Environment

Here is how the project went:

My class was able to roll 1,594 seedballs and package them 3 to a bag with instructions to disperse to all their TK/K-5th grade classmates as well as to any visitor who stops by our school's front office.

Through this project I/we learned:

Through this project, my class learned the value of working together to benefit someone (in this case, pollinators) whose importance can be overlooked and needs someone to be their voice. Here, we "spoke" with our hands!

What I/we might change:

If I was to lead this project again, I would want to include the entire third grade in this project and not just my own class.

My/our favorite part of this project was:

My students' favorite part of this project was the rolling of the seedballs. They loved getting their hands "dirty" and were inspired to Keep on rolling as I gave them updates on the total count as they rolled.

Some tips, tricks or fun facts about the project:

I think the most important tip is to give the group you are working with the BIG picture of WHY they are working on this project. Two brief videos featuring what pollinators need and a testimonial on the benefits of a real person's actions on helping pollinators were all my students needed to be inspired to begin their project.

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