This activity is designed to help participants experience the importance of plant phenology from a pollinator’s perspective. Participants learn why pollinators visit flowers and what color, shape, and size of flowers their pollinator prefers to visit.
The following activity can be used as an introduction to the concept of phenology. The items on the phenology board are phenomena that participants have observed in nature, perhaps without even knowing their relationship to ecology, science, and climate, or their status as phenological events.
This activity can be used independently or as an extension of the Plant and Animal Life Cycle Drawings activity. Using those same
procedures, students will draw life cycle timeline calendars for two species that are interdependent for food, pollination, reproduction, or habitat. Adapted from Signs of the Seasons: A New England Phenology Program.
Instead of the traditional circle-shaped life cycle drawings that you see in many books, this activity shows you a way to have your group/class use their species observations to draw a life cycle for one or more species. For this exercise, the drawing is stretched out in a line and matched to the dates on a calendar year. Adapted from Signs of the Seasons: A New England Phenology Program.
Students will gain awareness of local phenology and each other by playing a game connecting their birthdays with local phenology and seasonal phenomenon. Adapted from Birthday Phenology Game: A Getting-to-Know-You Game by Georgia Gómez-Ibáñez, Cambridge Elementary School, WI.
The following activity is an introductory lesson in the basics of observation skills for young children. Students will germinate seeds and observe the growth of their plants. They will learn basic plant anatomy, and about what plants need in order to grow and survive.
The following activity is an introductory lesson in the basics of observation skills for young children. Students will construct a bird feeder
using basic materials, hang their feeders at a safe outdoor location, and observe the behaviors of the birds who visit.
The following activity is an introductory lesson in the basics of observation skills for young children. In this activity, students will use their senses to observe different plants. Then, they will make seed balls out of clay that can be planted at your school or brought home.
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Lesson plan written and created by GK-12 Fellows of Michigan State University Liz Schultheis and Dustin Kincaid, 2012.