Nature Study – Wildflowers
Welcome to my 10 Days Series on the topic of nature study! Each of the ten days brings you a creative nature walk idea and a fun follow-up activity to spark your enthusiasm for nature study today!
Why study nature?
The answer is more serious than you might think.
Today’s nature study: Wildflowers
Creative Walk:
As you search for wildflowers today, you’ll closely observe each flower type to decide whether it’s a monocot or a dicot. Monocots and dicots are determined by the number of cotyledons inside the seed. (The little tiny leaves present when you open the seed.) Monocots have one little leaf inside the seed, while dicots have two.
In the field, you usually can’t open a seed to find the cotyledons, but other clues are present to help you place a plant in the correct category.
- Monocots typically have parallel veins in their leaves and their flower petals are in 3′s (3, 6, 9…).
- Dicots typically have webbed veins in their leaves and flower petals come in 4′s or 5′s (4, 8, 12…5, 10, 15…)
In a nature journal, older children should draw and label each flower type you find.
Follow-up Activity:
Back at home, dissect a wildflower and identify the parts. Use a dissection kit or a sharp knife (with adult supervision) to cut each part of the flower in half. For instance, you will cut apart the stem lengthwise to see if you can find the sticky liquid that travels inside. And you will carefully open the ovary to try to find ovules (eggs) ready to be fertilized. As you dissect, draw each part in your nature journal, noting interesting things you find. Use this diagram of a flower and its parts if you wish.
Read a Book or Two If You Like:
Today’s wildflower ideas are just a very small sampling of similar activity suggestions you’ll find in the NaturExplorers Wonderful Wildflowers study!
Be sure to visit the other fantastic bloggers taking part in this season’s 10 Days Series!
The 10 Days Series is organized by iHomeschool Network, a collaboration of outstanding homeschool bloggers who connect with each other and with family-friendly companies in mutually beneficial projects. Visit us on Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. And of course, click the image above to visit all the 10 Days posts from these homeschool moms of the iHomeschool Network.
Comments
35 Responses to “Nature Study – Wildflowers”Leave a comment, and if you'd like your own picture to show up next to your comments, go get a gravatar!
We don’t have a lot of wildflowers out here yet, except coltsfoot. But we’re really enjoying your Fungus Among Us unit!
Not very many wildflowers here either…unless you count the millions of dandelions in our yard! But we have been enjoying a wonderful spring!
We haven’t done ant plant studies. This looks like a great way to get started!
I’m looking forward to the series. We are just getting started with nature studies (sadly) so u love getting ideas. Thanks for the dissection hint. Looking forward to our walk.
Lots of wild flowers here! We dissected carnations a few weeks ago- looking at its main parts. Looking forward to finding a couple wild flowers to dissect
thanks for your post.
So excited about winning one of these!
We love wildflowers and planted some…but the deer ate them. I do love it when we find some and my children pick them for me.
Not too many wildflowers here yet! My challenge is to keep little hands from plucking the few that we do have.
Though we live on a farm, there aren’t many wildflowers blooming yet…but as soon as they start showing up, we will attack them and investigate them!
With my leg giving me a fit, we haven’t being doing any formal NS’s, but the call of the outdoors is about to make me get a cane and go for it! Wildflowers are our faves for their persistence, their fraglie beauty, and the sheer fun of finding them hither and thither!
(And we LOVE your nature studies!!!)
We love wildflowers for their persistence, their beauty and the sheer fun of finding them all over the place!
Wildflowers are awesome, what a great study lesson!
wonderful blog
We love Wildflowers! Our nearby State park has many growing alongside the walking paths. We are not allowed to pick those but they sure are fun to photograph. Next I plan on taking the kids out to draw some. I hope to search in my inlaws big backyard for some we can dissect next time we visit. Thanks for your post!
I absolutely love these ideas, and can’t wait to try them with the kiddos. (I already told them about this Nature Study series….I’m so excited about it!)
I’m having trouble finding a way to subscribe to your blog via email or facebook…am I just missing the links?
Great post! Planning to take the kids out for a nature walk this afternoon. We’ll be on the look out for some wildflowers!
Taking the kids on a walk today…hoping to see some flowers!
I was looking forward to getting ideas to teach the kids about nature, but I am learning things also! Thank you : )
I, too, would like to subscribe via email or facebook, but I couldn’t find where to sign up?
Wonderful! We’ll be sure to do this within the next couple of days, in preparation for the Wildflower Day at a local nature preserve on Saturday. It will be nice to reinforce their learning so quickly in a real-life setting….
Just back from a 3 hour gentle walk around our Botanic Gardens. Inspired by this post I found the two types of leaves and guided dd as to how they were the same and different. Then we kept looking at leaves to see what types they were. Interest was high so tomorrow we’ll try and find two seeds to dissect and also check out our garden for monocots and dicots. Not sure we’ll be able to count petals though. We’re in autumn and not much is still flowering .
Perfect time of year for this study, I will be 100% honest. The one reason why we don’t try to find wildflowers and mainly only say ohh how pretty is because Im kinda stupid when it comes to knowing what they are… Might really need this study!!
We have our own wildflower garden…its exciting to watch it bloom every year.
You’ll do just fine. Grab a wildflower field guide from the library and you might even find yourself able to identify some!
We don’t have a botanical garden nearby, but I think we’ll take some time to visit the local arboretum soon. Glad your study was successful!
Wildflower Day – fun!
Michelle, glad you’re learning, too. I never stop learning! You should find an email subscription sign up in the sidebar now.
I added better subscription links in the sidebar. Hoping these help!
Thank you, Sally! So sorry your leg hurts. Is it something that will heal or is it persistent?
I remember doing cutting open flowers with my dad when I was young and I’m excited to create this memory with my kids too. We are planning on doing a group study with some friends and I think we are doing wild flowers. I can’t wait to try your ideas!
So excited about this one! I just bought at the homeschool convention over the weekend!!!
I’ve reserved several of your books suggestions at the library already. Thank you for the resources.
We dissected a daffodil this past week. My kids want nuts over how many unfertilized eggs there were! We are planning on planting a wildflower garden along the back edge of our property.
I love when kids get excited about learning!
We spent last summer study Botany. It will be interesting to see how much is remembered….
Flower dissection is one of my favourite science and activities to do with my kids. My 19 yo arrived home from university when his younger sister and I were doing this and he still remembered doing it years previously when he’s been her age.