Below are ideas for extending this topic beyond the activity & exploration which you just completed.

• Lesson Assessment and Answer Key
• Reading: "Flowers Go Bats!"
• Activity Extension: More Paper Flowers
• Activity: Dissect a Flower
• Activity: A Bouquet of Flower Parts
• Activity: Garden Observation

Bees, butterflies, and birds aren't the only animals that pollinate plants. This reading describes how the Saguaro cactus depends on bats to move pollen from flower to flower.

If your students are interested in seeing how bats pollinate plants, show them these amazing photos of bats in action. (Click on a photo to enlarge it.)

Lily flowers are easy to take apart. Children can find the stigma and pollen rods easily and can often find eggs in the flower’s ovary. Each child needs:

• a flower to dissect. Day lilies are larger and easy to dissect, but they’re expensive. Peruvian Lilies (also called Alstroemeria) are less expensive and also work well.
• a worksheet with directions for the flower you chose: Peruvian Lily or Day Lily .
• an Operating Table sheet
• a butter knife or plastic knife
• a magnifying glass (optional)

You can extend the Flower Dissection activity by bringing in a mixed bouquet of flowers. Let students examine a variety of flowers and look for the parts that they found in the dissection. Finding the pistil, stamens, and ovary will be easy in some flowers — irises, tulips, amaryllis, daffodils, and gladiolus flowers all have parts similar to the lily.

Finding these parts in daisies, dandelions, and sunflowers can be much more challenging. These blossoms are actually made of many tiny flowers packed together, with parts too small to see without magnification.

Spend a sunny afternoon watching what pollinators visit the flowers in a garden. Have each student choose a flower that's in the sunlight and watch it for 5 minutes. Have them write down what pollinators visit their flower and how long they remain in or on the flower. Students can describe or draw the flower, noting what might attract insects to the flower.

Back in the classroom, discuss what students noticed. Did certain insects visit one type of flower more than others?

For more ideas on observation in the garden, check out the Pollinators in the Garden and other activities from the Denver Urban Garden.

If you liked making paper flowers for this mystery, here are some ways to take that activity further.

• Experiment with where you put the sticky stigma. Can you make a flower where the bee ALWAYS gets pollen on the stigma when he enters the flower?
• Make a garden of flowers of different colors using construction paper or coloring the flower template.
• Make flowers of different shapes. You can make a narrower cone using the flower template. Just cut off the gray triangle and overlap two or three petals.