Classroom activities
Activity 1: Garden Observation
Throughout the unit, students will engage in observation through their sit spots around the garden. We will begin with observation of the empty garden before we work in it, thinking about what could be there. We will get deeper into observation with tools like shovels, bug boxes, and hand lenses. We will also observe some healthy gardens in our community to see who and what we may want to include in our garden. Our goal will be to come back together as a class and combine our ideas to make a class garden plan. As we get close to the pollination party, we will engage in brief daily observations to see what changes are occurring and what care we may need to provide to our pollinators in preparation.
Activity 2: Garden Trail Mix
How do we decide what is good for the garden? We will begin by thinking about what snacks are healthy for us by planning and making a class trail mix. Then we will use gardening materials to make a trail mix to “feed” the garden, such as compost, soil additives, topsoil, worms, and other organic materials that add good nutrients to the garden community.
Activity 3: Pollinators in Action
In this activity, students will get to role play a day in the life of a pollinator. Students will have to reach into a bowl of cheese puffs to get a Starburst from the bottom, getting their fingers covered in the cheesy powder. This represents how a pollinator gets covered in pollen while trying to get nectar out of a flower. The student then travels to other coffee filter flowers around the room, where they will put down their Starburst and retrieve one from the new flower. In the process, students will be able to see how the cheesy powder (i.e. pollen) transfers from their fingers to the coffee filter flowers, much like pollen does from pollinators to flowers.
Activity 4: Incorporating Living Organisms
There are many ways to incorporate living organisms into this unit, such as hatching butterflies, having a bee demonstration from a local beekeeper, or keeping a worm farm. These could be additional daily observations, as well as important ways to see how pollinators may use an ecosystem differently depending on its life cycle stage. Plants are inherently worked into this unit through the garden, but I want to also focus on bringing green inside, such as engaging in growing plants in the classroom and transplanting them to the garden, or giving each student a plant to take care of daily to help them understand how much attention goes into care of nature.
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