Theme: Exploring Wild
and Native Plants
Wildflowers
Across the Curriculum
Inspired to engage students' hands, hearts, and minds with wildflower
explorations? Here are some additional ideas for doing so.
- Observe and compare a given area of a wildflower patch with
another type of ecosystem, for instance, a lawn or wooded
area. Use data sheets to inventory and compare the different
types and relationships of plant and animal life.
- Illustrate or take pictures or videos of a wildflower patch
over time.
- Calculate the percentages of different types of plants in
you own wildflower patch or meadow.
- Design a wildflower scavenger hunt, challenging pairs of
students to locate such items as leaves or flowers with specific
characteristics (e.g., toothed edges, fuzziness, nectar guides)
or plants that attract certain types of pollinators.
- Grow and/or observe and compare selected wildflowers with
their cultivated cousins, for instance, Queen Anne's lace
and carrots.
- Conduct the activity "Go Seeds Go" from Activities for
Growing Minds to explore seed dispersal. Then after collecting
or observing wildflower seeds, try to identify how each is
dispersed (by wind, water, animals, explosion, etc.).
- After reading Lady Bird Johnson's quote below, discuss whether
and how people today are "seed movers":
"Wildflowers are survivors. Many are native to this land;
many, like us, are immigrants who sent their descendants across
the nation on the wheels of covered wagons, on the hooves
of horses, or in the pockets of frontier children."
- Find out which wildflowers are endangered in your area and
design and create a slogan, logo or T-shirt to let people
know about protecting them.
- Immerse yourselves in wildflower poetry and prose. Find
references in fiction books or create haiku or other poetry
forms with a wildflower focus.
- Create a wildflower book for your state. (Two of Susan Cox's
students in Wilmington, DE, wrote and illustrated an A-to-Z
Wild About Wildflowers book featuring a child's name, state
location, and wildflower to coincide with every letter of
the alphabet. Example: Michelle saw a Monarch butterfly
sitting on some Milkweed which was growing in a meadow in
Milford.)
- Read Ralph Waldo Emerson's quote: "Many eyes go through
the meadow, but few see the flowers in it." Have students
discuss or write about multiple meanings of the quote, and
about how their own perceptions of wildflowers have changed
as a result of your project.
Wildflower Folklore
Did you know that columbine was once used as a tonic to revive
the strength of lions in the spring? Or that coreopsis seeds (from
koris, meaning "bedbug" and
opsis, meaning "looks
like") were believed to repel bugs and were used to stuff mattresses?
Wildflowers and native plants have played an important role in
people's lives throughout the centuries, providing medicine, food,
inspiration for art and writing, and beauty to lift the spirits.
It can be fascinating to study their folklore, secrets behind
their Latin and common names, and their virtues and uses. The
more common the wildflower or weed, the richer its history, number
of uses, and legends seem to be. Consider the following activities
and invent some of your own.
- Have students make creative guesses, then research to discover
what the common and Latin names of wildflowers tell us about
their structures, uses or cultural/historical significance.
- Read: Tomie dePaola's books, The Legend of the Bluebonnet
and The Legend of the Indian Paintbrush. Then have students
choose wildflowers and develop their own legends based on
the names.
- Research the historical medicinal uses of wild plants, and
find out how wild plants are used today for medicinal purposes.
- Discover and map out the native regions of wildflowers found
in a mixture or those found in your area.
- Find out about currently used edible wild plants and try
some wild plant recipes.
Author: Eve Pranis
Next Page
Page 1 2
3 4
5 6
7 8 9
10
© 2008
National Gardening Association