Flower Study

We've embarked on a flower study now that all those buds have bloomed!  Here is our first session.  I read through the parts of a flower from the Hand book of Nature Study and sent the kids out to get a specimen of their choice. They each came in with a different flower and I helped them identify the parts. They then went to work looking and drawing and writing.


Ds#1 had the Violet and wrote the following analogies:  a purple cosmos (as in astronomy and not flower); a string bean (the stem); the optic nerve and the orbit; colored fire. He has not gone back to do any writing for this session.

Ds #2 wrote these analogies for the beautiful pink azalea: erupting volcano (my kids are so stuck on volcanoes); a group of worms; gold on a red pillow; a king with his guards; a grabber; a group of tornadoes (another fascination); ice cream sundae; a group of people; people crowding around a famous guy; lightning.

The gold on the pillow was ultimately his inspiration for writing:

I started as a bud.  The I bloomed and rain fell on my white leaves and reacted with my argouth acid* in my pedals.  Then I turned pink.  Then, in between my pedals, little, thin sticks grew.  But one stick was special to me.  It had a pink stem, and had gold glitter on it.

He stopped there because it was the bottom of the page.   *He made up argouth acid for his story.

Ds#3 chose one of the many dandelions growing in our back yard.  He told me the following analogies: the sun; a tornado (yet another!); a duster (as in feather duster); a head of frizzy hair.  He did a wonderful job drawing the details in his flower.

There's plenty of more flowers to examine for comparison and review. Their vibrant colors and interesting structures make them a natural for this process. There'll be more to come for this topic!