Pollinators and measurement

Today we watched a video about pollinators then went to the community gardens to collect some first hand data on what kinds of pollinators there were. 

In our video we learned how many types of creatures help fertilize plants by transporting pollen (often accidentally) from the stamen of the plant to the pistil of a plant.  We used a chart to collect observations.  Children placed a tally mark on their chart every time they witnessed an creature crawling on these flower parts. 

Back at the class we totaled our tallies and wrote about our observations.  Most kids had the most tallies for bees.  Children saw some butterflies flying in the field but not visiting the flowers.  Kids found other insects pollinating on the flower parts like wasps, ants and beetles. 

This afternoon we explored measurement some more.  We looked at what made a good referent for measuring.  We determined that rocks were too varied and irregular to be good referents.  Good referents are uniform and identical in size and shape.  We also looked at some standard referents like centimeters, meters, pounds and ounces.  Look around your house for standard measurement units. 

Then the kids had fun measuring different objects in the class from their shoes to their water bottles.