~ Spring Lessons ~
Enhancing the Gardens for the Swallowtail Butterfly
To learn where the Black Swallowtail Butterfly lays its eggs: How would our vegetables and flowers be able to be pollinated if all the animals that pollinate them were no longer here?
Six Secret Pollinators
To understand the relationship between plants and bats, bees, wasps, moths, flies, beetles, ants and wind: Are there any other pollinators besides the bee, the butterfly, and the hummingbird?
Second Grade Spring #2 Six Secret Pollinators PDF Lesson and Supporting Documentation
Planting the Three Sisters
To understand that the time to plant depends upon the weather and that plants can help one another: How did the vegetables help one another to provide a bountiful harvest? How are we stronger together?
Second Grade Spring #3 Planting the Three Sisters PDF Lesson and Supporting Documentation
~ Fall Lessons ~
Observation: Becoming a Nature Detective in the Living Classroom Learning
Being able to sit quietly and observe everything around one’s self is an important skill in learning about nature and our relationship to it. As the children progress through the activities in our Living Classroom Learning Lab, they will need to use their senses of sight, sound, smell, and touch to understand the plants and animals that make their home there. In this lesson, the children will deepen their observation skills by refining their sense of hearing. They will be listening for the daytime noises of the Living Classroom to compare them to the nighttime noises of their backyard to answer the question: “Why are the noises in my backyard different from the ones I heard during the day at the Living Classroom?” This question could lead to a discovery of nocturnal animals.
Second Grade Ecosystem Study: Continue the Food Chain with Producers and Adding the Second Link in the Food Chain, Consumers
In first grade, the children were introduced to the first link in the food chain, the producers, which are all the plants in our World. The purpose of this lesson is to extend the food chain to its next components, the consumers. Both primary and secondary consumers are the animals that eat the plants. The purpose is also to begin to bring to the children the understanding that there is a life cycle in each ecosystem that keeps the ecosystem healthy; and to help the children understand their responsibility to our Earth’s ecosystems. The children will make their own food chain with producers and consumers in our Living Classroom Learning Lab. The children already know that people and animals have the same basic needs.
Second Grade Harvesting Seeds and Making Seed Balls, to Replenish the Prairie and Butterfly & Hummingbird Gardens
The purpose of this lesson is to show the children that the life cycle of plants is perpetuated by their ability to make seeds. The first grade children started planting flower seeds three to four months ago. Their seeds grew to plant, which when pollinated, have produced exquisite vibrant flowers. Now, here in the Midwest with the days and nights getting colder, the flowers will begin to wither and die. During this time, their flower heads will be producing the seeds to replant next Spring. so the entire plant cycle can begin again. One question for this lesson becomes, What is the complete life cycle of a plant? How will the seeds from these flowers and grasses be able to move away from their parent plant to begin this cycle again? The second question for this lesson then becomes How do seeds move?