After a long Winter sleep, Spring is officially just days away, and we are anticipating the seasonal changes that wake up the Earth. When the Northern Hemisphere warms up, we expect to see plants bud and bloom.
Today we dissected old flowers from a bouquet. As we took apart petals, stems, and leaves, we found interesting flower parts like where a flower keeps her eggs! And, how the pollen is dusty, and sneaks down the tube to find the hiding eggs. We also talked about different functions of the plant parts: petals are usually brightly colored to attract birds and insects to the nectar, stems hold up the flower and act like straws to suck water up to the top of the plant, and plants need to share pollen so the eggs can grow into more flower seeds.
We pretended to be "flower fairies" to help the garden grow. Plants grow in order: roots down, shoots up, leaves, buds, and sometimes flowers and fruit.
We used toy butterflies to pretend to drink nectar from our flowers, and carry pollen around. The flowers and leaves helped hide the butterfly eggs so we can "hatch more baby butterflies" (AKA- caterpillars).
Outside, we continued to learn about Spring weather (even though today was very cold!). The mountain snow will be melting and filling our rivers with fresh water. We loved simulating a full spring brook with this flowing, specialized, water table.
When the bucket fills enough to tip, it makes a big wave that sends our boats over the waterfall and fills the next bucket.
