Flower Parts
I'm continuing with the series of challenges from Handbook of Nature Study blog. For this challenge I got the girls (7 and 4) to have a close look at the tulips, which were beginning to droop in a vase on our dining room table. We talked about 'Mummy parts' and 'Daddy parts' and about pollen and bees and things. I tried to use words such as 'anther' and 'stigma' as naturally as I could, but this is a learning process for me too!! We eventually labelled a small diagram of something vaguely representing a tulip in our nature study journal.Now I just need to remember all the terms and keep using them naturally as we look at various flowers! (Thanks Barb for the tip to practise using one new term a week and adding them in slowly).
We planted our seeds last week at Grandma's. The mixed garden flowers and the sweet pea seedlings have already started germinating. We now need to decide exactly where we're going to plant them in the garden when they're strong enough.
Grandma and Gramps had some lovely flowers already blooming in their garden - daffodils, hyacinths, polyanthuses and wall flowers. Sophie (7) chose these polyanthuses (below) as the flowers she wanted to sketch into our nature journal. Charis (5) did a lovely picture of seeds and soil.
As a bonus to our spring nature study focus, we've also been keeping an eye on the frog spawn we noticed in a nearby town pond. A couple of weeks ago there was loads of the jelly-like balls with black dots all around the pond, some in clumps, others in long strings. A few days ago we noticed that many of the black dots had got longer and several were already wiggling away freely in the water. It'll be fun to watch them gradually grow legs and turn into frogs. This particular town park also has a lot of squirrels, which are very tame and come quite close hoping for some food. They're different to our Russian squirrels, which are smaller, redder, have tufty ears and aren't quite so bold!
It's great to be doing nature study in such lovely, warm, sunny weather. England seems to be enjoying unusually warm weather at the moment, in contrast to our Russian friends who are still enduring snow.
I just wanted to finish this post with a lovely and rather appropriate poem that Sophie and I came across in our poetry reading book for this term:
A Spike of Green, by Barbara Baker
When I went out the sun was hot,
It shone upon my flower pot.
And there I saw a spike of green
That no one else had ever seen!
On other days the things I see
Are mostly old except for me.
But this green spike so new and small
Had never yet been seen at all!
Abide in Him!
Flower parts are something that I continually work on as well. Naming them properly seems like a challenge because every flower seems to be different. But, over time your girls will pick it up if you keep at it.
ReplyDeleteWhat lovely flowers you have chosen to grow and study! Thank you for sharing your link with the OHC.
You asked about my camera. Here is an entry with some info for you:
http://handbookofnaturestudy.blogspot.com/2008/05/what-camera-do-i-use.html
I actually have never see the life cycle of a frog in real life. I hope to do soon soon with my son though. You guys are going to have fun watching it progress :)
ReplyDeleteI remember keeping frogspawn when I was younger, but haven't yet had the chance to do it with my kids. This time we'll just watch, but maybe one day (when the kids are all water safe!) we'll build a little pond into our back garden :-)
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