Flowers and Bees

Originally Published May 23, 2022

We had an amazing week with flowers and pollinators. Wow, when spring springs around here it really goes for it. When we left school the week before last we noticed that there were buds all over the flowering cherries in the play yard, and when we returned on Monday they were like big white clouds of blossoms.

Behind the flowering trees, the tall grass on the front yard was full of yellow dandelions and and practically a carpet of purple violets. Wilder walked into the yard first thing and said in a slow and amazed voice, "Teacher Jessica, what happened to your yard?" And this was a great starting place for the week. What indeed happened!? Flowers went crazy, and pollinators were all over the place, busy, busy, busy. We have been moving circle time into the shade sometimes lately, and we set up under the flowering trees full of bees to begin to talk about flowers and bees and that most important activity for all life on earth; pollination.

We read Fletcher and the Springtime Blossoms, and began by revelling in the petals overhead and falling all around us. On our way to the forest we picked a basket of different kinds of flowers that we found along the way, and then we read The Reason for a Flower. We then examined our flowers looking for nectar, pollen, and for any evidence of the coming fruits and seeds that follow the flowers. Wild strawberry flowers are pretty good for this, they develop into fruits so quickly. On Tuesday we read Flowers are Calling, and started to introduce the idea of pollinators. Flowers are calling to some creatures, and not so much to others. We smelled some lilac blossoms and tried out using them for paint brushes with some slip as paint in the forest. On Wednesday we had a very bee kind of day. We visited the new hive in the garden here at school, and tried on a bee suit and talked a little bit about beehives and beekeepers.

Then we headed back into the play yard for a presentation by Jeanne Davis, a beekeeper from Putney and head of the Bennington County Beekeepers association. She brought some bees and comb from her hives in her special bee window, and we got to see the queen, the workers, the babies in their cells and some of the honey storage sells. We tasted some honey in the comb, and tasted some pollen as well. It was pretty awesome.

Then we made some bee and honeycomb glue collage art.

On Thursday we had a rainy day and we baked dandelion lemon biscuits with violets.

When we went out to pick the dandelions and violets, we also visited the greenhouse and saw some greens from last fall that had bolted and flowered. This was so cool, because we could shake the spinach flowers and see the pollen fly from them, and we could see the mustard and arugula flowers and the seed pods on the same stalks. It was a great opportunity for our flower study!

We are still talking about flowers and pollinators this week, particularly bees. Today we read Flower Talk, about how different colored flowers are trying to attract different pollinators. Then the children each wrapped themselves up in the play silks as colorful flowers and we all pretended to be the likely pollinators visiting for each color. If you haven't yet and are interested, this week is still a great time for a pollinator focused family movie night. Wings of Life is a full length, hour and 20 minute long nature documentary about pollinators. It is rated G and it might be fun to watch as a family. It is available for streaming on Youtube for a purchase of $2.99 in SD, and it is also available for streaming on Disney if you have that.

Please check for ticks every day, they are out in force. Also please make sure that your child has an extra pair of clothes at school. I think some of our extra supplies may be getting depleted and it's always good to have another set to change into in case of water and mud. I am going to clean out the supply bag and send those extra mittens home. I guess it is finally time!

I can't believe that the end of the school year is almost here! I am so filled with gratitude for what we all have created this year, our first year here as a school in VT, and I am especially grateful to you families for showing up and making it all possible! It has just been so wonderful

Previous
Previous

Pollinators

Next
Next

On the Wing