Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Challenges 18 and 19

I've gotten a little behind in posting our Outdoor Hour Challenges.  We enjoyed challenges 18 and 19.  We were able to complete these in our garden.  We took a walk to the sunflowers and zinnias to see if we could spot any bees or butterflies.

Sure enough there were several butterflies and bees.  Here are the best pictures of each.

We talked about the importance of bees to our crops.  I explained that if we did not have bees to pollinate our crops we would not have had very many vegetables.  We remembered back to the spring when we noticed bees with sacks of pollen on their sides.  When bees collect pollen they spread it from one flower to the next.  This is how our crops are pollinated.
We also talked about flowers and plants making seeds for the next years crop after they are pollinated.  Here we examined a sunflower head, hanging full of sunflower seeds.

We came in and drew in our nature notebooks. 

Challenge 19 was a good continuation of what we had learned for the last challenge.  We collected seeds from a variety of plants in our garden.  We taped the seeds in our nature notebooks and labeled each one.
Next, we planted one of the pea seeds that we saved from our crop.  I hope we did a good job saving them so they will germinate.

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