Botany Week 6

The main topic of this week's lesson was exploring different methods of seed dispersal.  In anticipation of this lesson, I had been collecting lots of different types of seeds for months.  I even saved a baggie of dandelion tufts from our trip in May.  We do have tuft making plants here, but not the round puffy dandelions.  The ones we have don't blow as nicely and I wasn't sure I'd find any here when I wanted them.  They held up pretty well.

I found an idea on Pinterest to use a symbol from the movie Peter Pan for the 6 main types of seed dispersal:
Peter Pan - seeds that fly without wings (tufts)
Tinkerbell - seeds that fly with wings (samaras)
Captain Hook - seeds dispersed by animals by being hooked onto them
The Crocodile - seeds dispersed by animals through digestion
Pirate Ship - seeds that float (coconuts or mangrove - there is a lot of mangrove here)
Cannon - seeds that pop out, that is the plant releases seeds mechanically

I made big cards with the pictures and little pictures for the kids. 

They labeled their pages and sectioned off the pages to have a space for drawing and identifying the seed dispersal of some seeds I gave them in a baggie.

That took a while!  To wind things up, I had some extra samaras and they had a contest to see who could drop their samaras onto a target on the floor.  It turned out to be much harder than they expected, but they all seemed to like it.

I continue to have problems keeping the attention of some of the children.  I don't know if I can blame it on academic overload or if I just don't know how to manage them.  These same children never seem to have their basic class supplies either - something I am having a hard time being patient about.  They are supposed to have colored pencils specifically for my class, but only about half of them do.  That's annoying, but somehow not as exasperating as when they don't have a regular pencil or scissors.