Do kids still grow seeds in cups to see the mystery of new life (and early death)? Some valuable lessons there.
Which made me thought about a project I saw at MAKE Magazine and the MAKE: Blog about making one’s own biosphere in a jar.
If you’ve gotten high-concept, high-priced catalogs, you’ve seen ads for these sealed glass baubles, filled with water, brine shrimp and aquatic plants. Provided it gets an input of sunlight, it can remain a closed biosphere. (But I’ve wondered how long they really last. Another, perhaps unintended, lesson.)
The MAKE project is the same idea. With a pickle jar.  My inner tween self — a quarter-century past — would have loved this. The current middle-aged one still thinks it’s neat.
Read the directions! (PDF)
Every year the kids plant (and eventually they and their parents kill) a score of seeds. Every time we try to do better. Every time we fail…