Novel approach to the classroom seedling project

Since the dawn of man, children in classrooms all around the world have been growing their very own beans in small containers each spring. In the past six years, my two children alone have brought home sunflowers, zinnias, beans, peas, sunflowers, zinnias, beans, peas and even a patch of grass and one lone radish. Usually they come home in the dreaded styrofoam cups. I don't hate a lot of things, but dang, I hate those cups. Clearly, they have some advantages: lightweight, cheap, insulating. I'm also fairly unenthusiastic about these seedling projects because all the classroom stuff usually goes along swimmingly. They plant, water and take superb care of their little seeds. Then they bring it home, and in that transportation process, all hell breaks loose:

• One little pair of zinnias got accidentally dropped as we got out of the car after preschool. You can only imagine how I dropped it. I was holding a tote bag, a lunch box, my purse, my daughter's jacket, while trying to unbuckle a carseat. Oops. She was devastated. One zinnia pulled through. The other was a goner. My daughter still mourns that poor dead little zinnia.
• One sunflower was placed in the cupholder of my car. I figured I'd take extra special care of it. Didn't want a repeat of the croaked zinnia. Sadly, I forgot about the greenhouse effect while we played a few extra minutes on the playground after school. When we got back to the car, the sunflower was fried.
• Earlier this year, my kindergartner brought home a styrofoam cup with a patch of grass growing in it. I think it came home on a Friday, tucked in her backpack. Usually, I remember to empty the backpack at the end of each day. Oops. Amazingly, the patch of grass was still kicking after a weekend of imprisonment within her zipped pink backpack. Had that patch not rooted so nicely, the dirt would have dumped out, and the grass too would have died a slow, lonely death in the backpack.

Thus, I was joyful (yes, joyful!) when my daughter came home with seedlings for a pea, a radish and a bean. All neatly growing in a paper towel (instead of dirt) folded at the bottom of a zip bag! What a novel approach. With instructions on how to take care of the seedlings for all of us brown thumbs (fairly simple: tape bag to window, keep towel wet, keep baggie top open and transplant when ready). Now that these little plants have survived the trip home, I think we're good. They've been doing great in our sunny kitchen window. Once they are ready to transplant, you simply tear the paper towel into sections, and plant into dirt as you might with a peat pot. Rinse and reuse the zip bag.