Flowers and the birds and the bees

Hello!

We have flowers on our brassica rapa plants!  This week we have learned the various parts of the flower and what each part does in creating a new seed.  Today we dissected Alstormeria flowers.  Here are some pictures of our dissection adventure.

First, we removed the petals.  Then the stamen and pistil.  Then we open the sepal to find seeds.

The finished project.

Here's how our plants are measuring up.  They really do grow quickly!!!

Tomorrow we will be pollinating our flowers.  That meant today we had to make bee sticks.  We use cue tips, glue, and dehydrated bees.  Here are a few pictures of that task.

Tomorrow they'll use their bee sticks to "fly" their bees from flower to flower and pollinate them.  

Here's one final look at one of the plants.

I'll try to update again tomorrow or Saturday.  I am going to the Plain Talk about Reading conference the first part of next week.  I'm very excited and hope to have some new ideas!  

Thanks for reading.

Joell