Cycles - Inside a Flower

Focus: Whether they bloom in spring, summer, or fall, flowers have the all-important task of producing seeds. Their structure, smell, color, and blossom time all contribute to this purpose.

Puppets (Peter Pollen Grain, Paul Pollen Grain, Tiny Pollen Grain, Esther Egg)

Materials Checklist
Puppet Show (puppets, script, flower # 1 and flower # 2 attached to puppet stage) Flower Parts (felt boards or other large backgrounds, flower parts made of felt or paper, removable tape, flower puppets or large diagram)
Dissect a Flower (flowers, apples, green peppers, or other fruits with seeds, hand lenses, white paper, knives and cutting boards)
Field of Flowers (white and colored paper, white paper plates, crayons, markers, tape, scissors, glue, straws, pipe cleaners, modeling clay)
Flower Hunt (Flower Hunt questionnaires, drawing paper, clipboards, pencils, hand lenses)

Supplemental Reference Materials (Diagram for Felt Flower Parts, Apples - From Flowers to Fruit, Flower Hunt Investigation, Flower Scavenger Hunt Card, Do Not Pick List, Hunt Card (K-2))

Additional Reading/Resources
Newcomb's Wildflower Guide, by Lawrence Newcomb, Little Brown, 1989.
Wildflower Book: The Complete Guide to Growing and Identifying Wildflowers, by Donald and Lillian Stokes, Little Brown, Boston, MA, 1992.
The Natural History of Pollination, by Michael Proctor, Timber Press, Portland, OR, 1996.
The History and Folklore of North American Wildflowers, by Timothy Coffey, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, MA, 1993.

ELF Notes - Template for newsletter on Inside a Flower
* Word document * pdf file

For Younger Children
Many of the activities in VINS's new Small Wonders book can be used in ELF, too. To find appropriate activities for children aged 3-6, click here.

Teaching Suggestions
You will want to bring to workshop as great a variety of flowers as possible, including tree flowers. A friendly florist can really help by saving fading flowers for dissection.

Check out the flowers of rhododendrons – the pistils may be a different color than the stamens.

Note: according to the American Horticultural Society's A-Z Encyclopedia, contact with the sap of daffodils may irritate skin or aggravate skin allergies and contact with any part of tulips may aggravate skin allergies. We haven't had a problem with this to date, but we wanted to make sure folks had this information.

Use the Flower Hunt Investigation card while students are dissecting flowers to guide them with leading questions.

Flower Hunt
In urban settings, take a neighborhood walk to find nearby flowers. Locate trees that may be in flower and ask the children to match the types of flowers they find with the means of pollination. Is one means more successful than another in the city? If flowers are numerous (on trees, for example), permit each child or small group to bring a sample back to the classroom to share.

Learning Goals

Concepts/Ideas:

• In the life cycle of a flowering plant, the flowers exist for one purpose only: to produce seeds.
• The structure of a flower includes the parts necessary for producing seeds.
• Pollen must be transferred from the stamens to the pistil for ovules to be fertilized and to begin development into seeds. For some plants, pollen is carried by the wind, for others by insects or other animals.
• Flowers that must attract animal pollinators advertise with big, colorful petals, sweet scent, and the reward of extra pollen and sweet liquid nectar. Flowers that rely on wind pollination have unobtrusive petals, dangling stamens, exposed pistils, and an abundance of pollen.

Vocabulary: life cycle, seed, flower, pistil, stigma, style, ovary, ovules, egg, stamen, anther, filament, petal, sepal, pollen, pollination, pollinator, fertilization, germination (definitions)

Skills:

• Active listening to learn the function of flowers and about the basic process of pollination
• Dissecting a flower and using a hand lens to examine the parts
• Comparing the structures of different kinds of flowers
• Constructing a model of a flower that includes the parts necessary for seed production
• Observing the variety of flowers outdoors and recording the differences among them

Grade Expectations:
Grades PK-K (S30, S38) Plants need water, sunlight, and soil to live. Living plants produce flowers. Seeds come from flowers.

Grades 1-2 (S30, S31, S38) Plants undergo stages of growth and development that include sprouting from seed, producing flowers, pollination and formation of seed. Flowers are made up of parts necessary for seed production. Pollen must be transferred from stamens to pistil by insects or wind in order for seeds to develop.

Grades 3-4 (S30, S31) Some flowering plants depend on wind or insects to transfer pollen from stamen to pistil. There are many different varieties of flowers; all contain structures necessary for seed production.

Grades 5-6 (S30, S31, S38) Life cycles of flowering plants and structures of flowers vary with species. Structure of flowers may be related to means of pollination: wind pollination or insect pollination.

Return to April or May ELF.