Category: Flowers to Fruit

Flowers to Fruit – Background

From the time the pussy willows open in early spring until the last of the asters, spring, summer, and fall are the seasons of flowers. They are glorious – but why do they exist at all? Like the singing of birds and the taste of ripe strawberries, they give us great pleasure, and for some that’s enough – but flowers are essential to the lives of flowering plants. Blooming is the culmination of months or years of growth, and understanding their parts will illuminate what they do.

Flowers have four kinds of parts, and they are in predictable positions. Continue reading Flowers to Fruit – Background

Flowers to Fruit – Activities

FOCUS: Flowers come in all shapes and sizes, but they all serve the same function: to produce seeds. We’ll look at the insides of flowers to see how seeds develop and compare different kinds of flowers and their structures. To make seeds, flowers need to be pollinated. Some do this with the help of the wind and others with the help of animals, like hummingbirds, moths, beetles, and especially bees.

INTRODUCTION
Objective: To begin to explore and ask questions about flowers and fruit.

Give each small group of children a variety of flowers, and ask children to talk about what they notice about the different flowers.

Materials: an assortment of flowers, magnifying lenses

FLOWERY PARTS
Objective: To investigate a flower’s structure, sorting the parts and looking for patterns of similarities and differences.

Give each pair of children a simple flower, such as a Peruvian lily (Alstroemeria), daffodil*, or tulip, and a magnifying lens. It is helpful if everyone has the same kind of flower to begin with. Continue reading Flowers to Fruit – Activities

Flowers to Fruit – Puppet Show

All the Buzz about Flowers

Characters: Sadie Sunflower, Beulah Bumblebee, Charlie Chickadee, Gertie Grass.

Prop: two yellow pompoms for bumblebee’s legs; sign saying, “Bees Welcome, Pollen Here.”

(Sunflower and Bumblebee enter together.)

Beulah Bumblebee (buzzing around sunflower, singing) Oh pollen, so nutritious, oh nectar, so sweet!

Charlie Chickadee  Hi, Beulah Bumblebee, what’s that yellow stuff on your legs? Continue reading Flowers to Fruit – Puppet Show

Flowers to Fruit – Standards

FLOWERS TO FRUIT ALIGNMENT WITH
NEXT GENERATION SCIENCE STANDARDS
The activities in this unit help children understand the basic concepts in the Disciplinary Core Ideas listed here. You can use the following list as a guide for lesson planning. These Disciplinary Core Ideas are taken from Grade Band Endpoints in A Framework for K-12 Science Education. Additionally, our activities give children opportunities to engage in many of the Science and Engineering Practices and reflect on the Crosscutting Concepts as identified in the Next Generation Science Standards. Continue reading Flowers to Fruit – Standards