We’re having some Fun with Flowers this month in the Kids Craft Club, and studying a real flower is a great extension to our craft time fun! We found a beautiful bearded iris in our yard, and took it apart to understand the complex system that makes a flower grow. This is a good tactile experiment for the kids – they can feel the flower parts as they learn. It’s also handy to have a sketch pad nearby so that the kids can draw what they see. A microscope or magnifying glass will give the kids a closer look.
Our Iris in the Garden
Tip: If you can, find one flower per little person in addition to your flower, so that each child can spend time feeling the flower and participating without worry about damage.
- We started by counting the petals on our flower – Flowers with petals in multiples of three are called monocots. Flowers with petals in multiples of four or five are dicots. What kind of flower do you have? Things you can do: Draw a flower with the same number of petals as yours. Draw flowers with petals in groups of three, and with petals that are in multiples of four or five.
- We gently removed the petals to take a closer look at the rest of the flower. Things you can do: Feel the petals – what do they feel like? Are all the petals the same? Our flower had 3 dark purple petals with ‘beards’ and three light purple petals. The bearded petals look fancy, which might attract insects to help pollinate the flower. If your flower has two kinds of petals, do the different petals feel different from each other?
- Once you’ve studied the flower petals, have a look at the rest of your flower. You can learn about the reproductive parts of the flower. These are the parts that help the flower make seeds which can become new flowers:
The Stamen is the part that looks like a miniature scrubber brush! It has a long handle or filament and a brush tip or anther that holds the pollen. The Pistil is at the base of the flower – the top of the pistil is the Stigma. It’s the clearish-white part at the flower base, and it carries the pollen down through the stem. - We gently removed the last remaining petals to count the Stamen on our flower. How many are on your flower? Things you can do: gently touch the top of the stamen. What does it feel like? When you take your fingers away, is there any powdery pollen on your fingers? What colour is it? If you have a magnifying glass, use it to look at the pollen. What does it look like when it’s magnified?
- An adult can carefully slice down the centre of the stem and open up the flower. What can you see? Now you can see the rest of the pistil – pollen get carried down the hollow body or style to the ovary, where the pollen fertilizes the flower’s eggs. Can you see any tiny eggs? These would be the seeds of the flower after they’re fertilized by the pollen!
