Early Spring Flowers

We were a bit late with this study due to the frantic Purim preparations but I did not want to miss out on it.  Froggy had been asking about tulip and iris seeds so I figured it needed to be done.  The Handbook of Nature Study gives a great concise description of several bulb plants.  We picked Daffodils as they are currently up in our yard and very easy to study.  The tulips have not yet bloomed.

I read through the relevant pages and highlighted what I needed to remember for our time outdoors looking at the flowers.  Then grabbing journal and pencils we went outside for some "art time"

There are daffodils all around our neighborhood so seeing them is easy.  We looked at them in our backyard where some were in full bloom while tanother was still working on opening up

We looked at the different parts of the flower and learned the names of the parts.  We played turning the daffodil upside down so that the petals became a skirt and the corona became a petticoat for the fairy who lives inside the flower. 

We looked carefully at the stamen and anther.  Froggy touched the anther getting the pollen on her fingers.  She guessed it was the nectar from the flower which created a lovely segue way into where the nectar actually is, who gets that nectar and how.  She danced the butterfly flitting from flower to flower.  And I showed her fingers and then asked her to picture the butterfly drinking from the flower.  Where does she stand?  Where does the pollen go?  What happens as she flits like you were dancing? And thus we have learned pollination.

 Froggy has progressed miles from the child who would not even hold a crayon. Yet she still has get reluctance to try to sketch.  We are working at looking at the shapes inside of things.  In doing so I have found that it helps tons if I sketch with her first in my own journal and then work hand over hand with her in her journal.

As we sketched, we talked.  We labeled the different parts of the flower as we drew them. I answered her questions about why certain flowers like tulips,daffodils and irises do not have "seeds" as she is used to seeing them.  We drew how the bulbs look under the ground, propagating as they do.

Then we cut open the ovary to see that even though it does not spread by seeds most of the time, daffodils still have seeds just like all plants.
It looks like a huge study written up here but it was really very short and lots of fun. It was one of our most informative nature studies to date.