Module 1

Activity B: Why Pollination and How it Works

Participants will:

• Learn more about pollination by reflecting on the Observation Sheet they generated in Activity A.
• Participate in a game that demonstrates the pollination process.

Materials Needed

• Fruit and "vegetable" snacks — apples, pears, zucchini, cucumber, etc. (Zucchini and cucumbers are, botanically speaking, fruits.)
• Tomato, pepper, or squash plant with flowers (optional)
• Napkins
• Nature’s Partners: Pollinators & Plants Group Observation Record created in Activity A
  
• Pollination activity:

  3 pipe cleaners/participant
  1 8oz. foam or paper cup/participant
  Talcum powder
  Colored chalk, 2 or 3 pieces crushed to powder or several colors of Jello powder
  Transparent tape, 3-4 rolls
  Nails, 5 or 6

Getting Ready

• Put up the Pollinators & Plants Group Observation Record created in Activity A where you can refer to it
• Cut fruits and vegetables and arrange for serving.
• Have pollination activity supplies set up where participants can easily use them.
• Obtain flowering vegetable plant if season is appropriate.

Honey bee on apple blossom.
Photo by Suzanne DeJohn/NGA.

Suggested grouping

Whole group

Reflection and Review

Ask group to look at the Pollinators & Plants Group Observation Record they created and to share any new questions or ideas about their observations.

Exploration

1. Invite participants to sample fruits and vegetables that depend on pollinators.

2. While they are eating their snacks, review the concepts on pollination introduced at the end of Activity A.

You have identified how the insects benefit from the plants. What is the name of the food they get from flowers? (nectar)

How do plants benefit from the insects? (Insects help pollinate plants.)

Why is pollination important to fruit and vegetable production? (Only pollinated plants can develop fruits and produce seeds that will grow more plants.)

Concept Development

3. Show participants the tomato, pepper, or squash plant with flowers. Ask,

What has to happen to these flowers if the plant is going to produce a fruit (tomato or whatever is appropriate)?

4. Clarify and further define the terms pollen, pollination, pollinator.

What would happen if the flowers were not pollinated? (Plants would not bear fruit and produce seeds for reproduction.)

Where do we get most of our fruits and vegetables? (Stores --> farms and orchards)

Where are the farms and orchards located?

Why should we be concerned about the protection of crop pollinators everywhere?

What if pollination didn't happen? (Wouldn't have fruits and vegetables like we are eating now.)

Concept Application

Make pipe cleaner insects.


Wrap tape sticky side out on one end of pipe cleaner
and insert other end through bottom of cup.


Use tape to secure pipe cleaner and to cover hole.


Sprinkled colored powder in cup, taking care not to
get it on tape.
Photos by Suzanne DeJohn/NGA

1. Explain to the participants that they are going to construct a model of an insect and then investigate how it will pollinate a flower.

2. Have participants each make an insect by bending one pipe cleaner into an insect shape, then twisting a second pipe cleaner around its center. Note: Insect shape should be small enough to fit easily into the bottom of the paper cup flower.

3. Have participants make a flower:

• Poke a hole in the bottom of a cup using a nail.
  
• Wrap tape, sticky side out, around the top of the remaining pipe cleaner. Insert non-taped end of the pipe cleqaner through hole in bottom of cup to form the flower pistil. Tape pipe cleaner in place on bottom of cup.
  
• Carefully sprinkle a teaspoon of talcum and 1 color of chalk powder or jello powder in the bottom of the cup, trying not to get any on the tape on the pipe cleaner.

4. Have the students fly their insects in and out of their flower cup and the cups of other students — allow them to touch the powder and taped pipe cleaner.

What happened to the taped pipe cleaner?

Are there different colors on the pipe cleaner?

5. Inferring and communicating:

What did we use to simulate the flower's pollen?

What happened to the pipe cleaner insect?

What happened to the "pollen?"

How do you think this relates to real flowers?

(Inside the flower is a pistil that is sticky like the tape. The pollen sticks to the pistil and is used to fertilize the ovaries in the flower.)

Why do you think pollination is important to us?

(Without pollination the plant cannot develop seeds — reproduce — or produce fruits and we would not have many of the foods we enjoy.)

<< previous      next >>