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Category: Gardening With Children (Page 2 of 10)

The “Dirt” on the #Kidlit Book Dig In!

March 11, 2016 / / 2 Comments

Right in time for the spring gardening season and for STEM Friday, we have Dig In! by Cindy Jenson-Elliott and illustrated by (“dirt by”) Mary Peterson.

Cindy Jenson-Elliott’s new book celebrates the simple pleasures of mucking around in the soil. Each page reveals a new discovery, from earthworms to pill bugs.

With only a few words per page, the text is simple enough to read to toddlers or for beginning readers to tackle on their own.

I dig in the dirt…and find a seed.
Seed waits.
I dig in the dirt…and find a spider.
Spider runs.

The illustrations are linoleum block prints with just the right touch of humor. It might be fun to accompany the book with a quick art lesson using ink stamps or making potato prints to celebrate the illustrations.

It seems that digging in the dirt is a pastime too few young children get to indulge in these days. Dig In! is sure to encourage young readers to get outside and explore the world under their feet.

Related Activity:

Have everyone put on some old clothes and take your children out to a place they can examine some soil. Start by simply sitting on a patch of soil. Ask your children what they think soil is. Is it alive? (Yes, components of soil are alive.) What does it consist of? Are all soils alike? Smell the patch of soil, what do you smell? Touch the soil. What does it feel like? Is it wet or dry? Warm or cool?

Then allow the children to dig into the soil with their hands. Sandbox digging tools can be helpful, but not necessary. If age appropriate, supply a hand lens or magnifying glass. Talk about what they discover.

Some things to look for:

(Links go to related posts with activities)

Sue also has a review and suggestions for related activities at Sally’s Bookshelf.

soil-little-pill-bug

Age Range: 4 – 8 years
Publisher: Beach Lane Books (March 1, 2016)
ISBN-10: 1442412615
ISBN-13: 978-1442412613

Disclosure:  An ARC was provided by the publisher for review purposes. Also, I am an affiliate with Amazon so I can provide you with cover images and links to more information about books and products. As you probably are aware, if you click through the highlighted title link and purchase a product, I will receive a very small commission, at no extra cost to you. Any proceeds help defray the costs of hosting and maintaining this website.

Come visit the STEM Friday blog each week to find more great Science, Technology, Engineering and Math books.

For Arbor Day: Trees in Books and Butterfly Gardens

April 17, 2015 / / 2 Comments

For our regular STEM Friday feature we recommend two books about trees for children, just in time for Arbor Day, next Friday April 24, 2015. (Read the rest of the reviews and see a video book trailer at Wrapped in Foil blog.) Then we’ll finish out Butterfly Gardening With Children Week with a discussion of trees for butterfly gardens.

The first book, Branching Out: How Trees Are Part of Our World by Joan Marie Galat and illustrated by Wendy Ding (2014), describes a particular species of tree, how it used by humans, and what animals depend on that kind of tree in a series of four-page spreads. The 11 species of trees highlighted range from red maples and downy birches to pau brasil and cork oaks.

The second book, Celebritrees: Historic and Famous Trees of the World by Margi Preus and illustrated by Rebecca Gibbon (2011), consists of a series of two-page spreads telling the stories of 14 famous, tall and exceptionally-old trees from around the world, the back matter gives more information about the trees and a number of suggestions about what the reader can do to help and encourage trees.

Appropriate for butterfly gardening week:  In the section about oak trees in the back matter of this book, we find out that a single large oak tree can support up to 34 species of butterflies!

That fact reminds us that although growing pretty flowers helps the adult butterflies, to have a truly productive butterfly garden you need to supply food for caterpillars as well.

Many beautiful species of butterflies require trees as larval hosts.

Examples:

1. Hackberry trees (Celtis species) are larval food for

  • Tawny emperor butterflies
  • Hackberry emperor butterflies
  • Mourning cloak butterflies
  • Question Mark butterflies
  • Snout butterfly

mystery-butterfly-2-identicationThe snout butterfly

Hackberry_Emperor,_Megan_McCarty46Hackberry emperor butterfly (Public domain photograph by Megan McCarty)

(Seed of the Week post about Canyon Hackberry)

2. Live oaks are larval food for California sister butterfly larvae.

California-sister-butterflyCalifornia sister butterfly, Ramsey Canyon, Arizona

Some duskywings and hairstreaks also use oaks for food.

3. Black cherry (Prunus serotina) trees are larval food for:

  • Red-spotted purple
  • Eastern tiger swallowtail
  • Coral hairstreak

4. Citrus trees (orange, lemon grapefruit) attract numerous giant swallowtails. Their larvae are called orange dog caterpillars.

caterpillar-orange-dogAn orange dog caterpillar on a grapefruit leaf

In addition to larval food, trees provide shelter for butterflies (and a multitude of other animals), provide safe places for the caterpillars to pupate, and some flowering trees supply nectar for many more adult butterflies.

In his book, Bringing Nature Home, entomologist  Doug Tallamy gives a list of how many species of butterflies and moths are supported by 21 kinds of trees. The numbers are astonishing! He says oak trees (genus Quercus) provide food for some 534 different species of butterflies and moths. Given that those butterflies are important pollinators and parts of the food web, that is an enormous contribution.

Activity:

If you are going to plant a tree for Arbor Day or any other event, consider choosing a local species that will host butterflies. You will get yet another benefit from a tree. Please leave a comment if you have any questions about how to choose a suitable butterfly host tree for your area.

___________________

Wrap-ups:

 This is the final post for Butterfly Gardening with Children Week. Hope you enjoyed it. If you missed the previous posts from the week, check our links page for topics we covered.

butterfly-gardening-with-children

Interested in reading more great books about trees for Arbor Day? Try our giant, redwood-sized list of children’s books about trees at Science Books for Kids.

tree-books-button

 

Disclosures: The books above were from my local library. Also, I am an affiliate for Amazon. If you click through the linked titles or ads and make a purchase, I will receive a small commission at no extra charge to you. Proceeds will be used to maintain this self-hosted blog.

Come visit the STEM Friday blog each week to find more great Science, Technology, Engineering and Math books.

 

Pollination By Butterflies

April 16, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Bees get all the buzz whenever someone brings up pollination, but butterflies deserve some credit, too. In fact, there are some flowers that are pollinated specifically by butterflies.

Background:

What is pollination? Remember visiting flower parts a few weeks ago? Let’s look at the generalized diagram again:

Mature_flower_diagram.svg (“Mature flower diagram” by Mariana Ruiz LadyofHats. Public Domain image at Wikimedia Commons.)

Pollination is simply the movement of the pollen made in the anthers (pollen shown as orange balls in this diagram on the right) to the top of the female part of the flower, called the stigma. Sometimes the physical distance between the two seems quite small, but many, many plants need the assistance of animal pollinators to achieve pollination.

red-bird-of-paradise-228Take the red bird of paradise flowers. The long, red threadlike structures are the anthers on very long filaments.

red-bird-of-paradise239

What pollinates such an odd flower? It turns out that when swallowtail butterflies drink the nectar of these flowers, they get pollen all over their wings. When they drink at another red bird of paradise flower, they pollinate it.

Other flowers pollinated by butterflies include phlox, many of the flat-topped flower heads in the daisy family (asters, zinnias, etc.), and the milkweeds.

Butterflies are attracted to flowers so they can feed on nectar.

queen-butterfly-339-feedingButterflies use their proboscis (mouthparts) rather like a straw when they drink nectar. Can you see this queen butterfly’s proboscis probing the milkweed flower?

Pollination-Related Activities

1. Nectar Cups for Young Children

Let young children pretend they are butterflies and make nectar cups for them to drink from.

Gather:

  • Plastic or paper cups with tops that have opening for straws
  • Straws
  • Construction paper or posterboard
  • Flower shape stencils (optional)
  • Pencils
  • Scissors
  • Juice or other drink to serve as nectar

1. Have the children cut flower shapes from the construction paper. For very young children, adults may need to help draw the flower shapes using stencils and to help cutting out thicker posterboard.

2. Use a sharpened pencil to poke a hole in the center of the flower large enough to accommodate the straw.

3. Fill the cup with the drink (“nectar”). Cap the cup and then put the straw through the paper flower center and into the cap of the cup. Allow the flower to rest on the cap, so the children can drink the “nectar” from the “flower.”

2. Investigate Pollination in the Butterfly Garden

Surprisingly little is known about butterflies and pollination. Older children may want to investigate butterfly pollination in their butterfly gardens.

Go out to the garden at the same time every day for at least once a day and count how many butterflies you see on a few different types of flowers over a given amount of time, say 15 minutes. Record the species you see with a camera. Graph your results and figure out which species of butterflies prefer which types of flowers.

(You might want to see a similar study for bees for ideas).

butterfly-gardening-with-children

Be sure to check our growing list of links to information about butterfly gardening with children.

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