Studying seeds and plant life? Working on nutrition or ecology in preschool through second grade? I hope this will help. My newest book, Let’s Go Nuts! Seeds We Eat was released this week by my marvelous publisher, Beach Lane, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. It’s a chant but with lots of, should we say, chewy endmatter. Once I started working on this book even I was amazed by just how many foods we eat are made from seeds. Just check out the pantry. Corn. Wheat. Lentils. Almonds. Soy milk. Popcorn. Pumpkin seeds. I’m still eating some of the dried beans that made up the photos in the book. It was photographed at the South Bend Farmer’s Market, Bamber’s Superette, Saigon Market, and other local food spots, including Notre Dame University’s South Dining Hall!
It completes the trio of books that includes Rah, Rah, Radishes: a Vegetable Chant and Go, Go, Grapes: a Fruit Chant. You’ll find lots of activities related to those first books here on my site. Do let me know about what you creative educators do with edible seeds! Here are a few seed resources to get you started.
Here’s a photo of me working on the final spread for the book. I used an old galley from Go, Go, Grapes to measure how big I needed my seed picture to be. By the way, no seeds were wasted. After the photo I slid the seeds into a bowl then while I watched TV I sorted all those seeds back into jars. No joke. Did that many, many times after photo shoots. Nothing wasted. Some leftover seeds were used by the fabulous Unity Gardens folks.