Teaching Cross-pollination in Pre-school

This morning the greenhouse keeper at my school asked me if I could help him put together a lesson teaching cross pollination of a flower in a garden to his pre kindergartens that would be visiting the greenhouse. He said he wanted to demonstrate the process of a bee cross pollinating in an age appropriate way. So we created this easy lesson.

Step 1: Supplies

a small soft sponge (a cotton ball can be used as well)

color paper for bee wings

scissor

glue

drawing paper (xerox machine to make several copies)

pastels

sharpie

Step 2: Tools to Demonstrate

I cut and glued wings etc. on the sponge to create the bee. Then drew two large flowers on the paper which was xeroxed several times so each child had a copy.

Step 3: Cross-Pollinating

We used pastels to color in the "pollen" Pastels cause a dust-like surface to represent the pollen grains which are small and dusty. Next the bee was rubbed in the pastel to represent the pollen sticking to the bee when he visits the flower to collect food. Then the bee travels to the other flower and deposits (by gently rubbing the drawing) the pollen. Later the children were given crayons to color their pollinated posies.

Comments

[KerrickGL]

Clever! It could be paired with flower dissections (which I've done with preschoolers), to show the pollen and the structures. One of the most common misunderstandings I hear from grade schoolers is that bees visit flowers *in order to* get pollen and pollinate other plants (rather than to get nectar, with pollination as a side consequence), and so it's handy to be able to show the nectar inside certain flowers as well.

This is a thoughtful activity. Thank you for putting it together.