Today while we were gardening my son complimented me on how beautiful my flower plants look. I told him that he also helped me tend to them, so he gets to take some credit for it too! Then he requested if I can make the green leaves colorful as well like the flowers since they are prettier. Oh! how I wish I could do that son :).
He asked mama, why are the flowers colorful and not the plant?
There was a Honeybee hovering over the flowers. It flew into the flower, sat there & then flew to the next plant. I asked my son, what he thinks the honeybee took from the flower? He replied eagerly, HONEY! Seems like a great time to impart a lesson about co-existence. I said, yes, it took some honey from the flower & in turn took some pollens to give it to another flower. This is how pollination works! The bees help the flowers by spreading their pollens, so that new plants can grow.
When we came back inside we decided to make a hands-on activity about our above observations.
Materials needed:
- Paper & pencil
- Crayons/ Color pencils
- Orange peels
Steps:
- Draw a flower on each scrap of paper, you can choose to make how many ever flowers. We made 4. Draw a Bee on one scrap.
- My son chose the flower colors & colored them. Then he colored the Bee.
3. We cut up some Orange peel to depict the pollen. And then we arranged them as we saw it. A bee is going from flower to flower collecting the honey and in turn spreading the pollens.
And lastly coming back to the original question that started this conversation. Why are flowers colored? They are brightly colored to attract the insects, bees & birds so that they help the plants with pollination, and thus new plants are formed.
FuntasticSTEM 