Spring

A "Life-Changing" Hummingbird Observation

Every spring, approximately 600 children visit the bird-banding site at Fort Morgan, Alabama, a peninsula between Mobile Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, to learn how specially trained and permitted volunteers capture hummingbirds and apply teensy aluminum bands to their legs to gather data that can help researchers understand their life cycle. Some of the children even get to hold a hummer in their hands before it flies away.

Creating a Family Butterfly Garden

Submitted by sarahp on Fri, 07/16/2010 - 00:49

One of the most interesting theme gardens you can plant with your children is a butterfly garden. A butterfly garden provides a colorful array of nectar-producing plants that not only attract butterflies and hummingbirds, but can also draw your children to explore the intricate relationships of plants and animals. With the appropriate plantings, your garden provides opportunities to educate your children about the life cycle of a butterfly and allows them to view each stage of growth.

Make Your Own Hummingbird Feeder

Submitted by sarahp on Thu, 07/15/2010 - 03:07

Overview: Based on what they know about hummingbirds, students will design and create their own feeder using everyday materials.

Subject Areas: science, visual arts, math

Key Concepts: physical adaptations

Skills: problem solving, creative thinking, teamwork/cooperative learning, artistic expression, observation, investigation

Location: indoors and outdoors

Design a Hummingbird Flower

Submitted by sarahp on Thu, 07/15/2010 - 02:45

Overview: In this activity, students design and create a flower adapted for pollination by hummingbirds.

Subject Areas: science, visual arts, language arts

Key Concepts: physical adaptations, pollination, competition

Skills: problem solving, creative thinking, teamwork/cooperative learning, artistic expression, oral communication; observation (if real flowers are examined)

Location: indoors

Estimated time: 1 hour+

Territorial Tactics

Submitted by sarahp on Thu, 07/15/2010 - 02:22

Overview: Territorial Tactics is an energetic tag game in which students simulate the territorial behavior and survival strategies of hummingbirds. It is designed to teach students tactics used by dominant territorial hummingbirds to guard a feeder or patch of nectar plants, and tactics used by other hummingbirds to try to feed from that protected food source. (The game is like Capture the Flag with a few adaptations.)

Subject areas: science, physical education

Key concepts: behavioral adaptations, intra-species competition

Plant of the Month: The Gourd

Submitted by sarahp on Tue, 07/06/2010 - 08:23

Many of your students may have seen gourds at "work": as autumn porch and table decorations, as bath sponges, or as birdhouses. But are they aware that people have used gourds for millennia, and for lots of different purposes? Explore history, social studies, botany, and art in the school garden with these versatile vines. But be careful -- growing and crafting with gourds can be habit-forming!

Growing a Musical Instrument

Submitted by sarahp on Tue, 07/06/2010 - 00:13

I approached the principal of Sprague Elementary School (K-2) in Lincolnshire, IL with an idea for growing gourds with the students and using them to create Native American rattles. The second grade classrooms at Sprague participate in an extensive Native American Study Unit and I felt that gourd rattles were an effective hands-on way to teach students about the beliefs and culture of Native Americans. After receiving approval I began a two-year artist-in-residence program.

The Right Spot for a Rain Garden

By:

NGA Staff

Overview

The first step in rain garden design is scouting an appropriate site. This activity challenges students to explore one aspect of this process: soil drainage assessment. (For full background information about the purpose of rain gardens and basic design principles, please read Rain Gardens to the Rescue.)

Journey to the Center of a Seed

Submitted by sarahp on Sun, 06/06/2010 - 14:35

The following activity is from the curriculum guide GrowLab: Activities for Growing Minds. This curriculum brings plant-based explorations to life through 46 lesson plans and hundreds of extension activity ideas that spark students' curiosity about plants and invite them to think and act like scientists. Developed by NGA and written and field-tested by educators, this complete curriculum uses fun, illustrated activities to explore plant life cycles, examine plant diversity, and investigate the interdependence of plants, humans, and other living and non-living things.

Meet the Lady Beetles

Submitted by sarahp on Fri, 05/21/2010 - 16:33

Although we know them as ladybugs, these familiar garden denizens, which inevitably inspire curiosity and questions, are not actually bugs, but beetles, and they are not all ladies! (True bugs constitute a different group, or order, of insects, characterized by broad, flat bodies with triangular designs that are formed by overlapping wings.)