What are angiosperms, you ask? Flowering plants, of course! :)
Have you ever thought about how many flowering plants you come in contact with every single day?
Or better yet...all the products that come from flowering plants?
Roses, sunflowers, mums, and lots of other beautiful flowers we enjoy indoors and outdoors are all obvious angiosperms.
But what about fruits, veggies, wheat, oats, corn, rice, honey, sugar? ...Most of what we eat wouldn't be here!
But, we could eat meat, right?
WRONG! Most of the meat we eat (chicken, pork, beef, wild game) rely on angiosperms to live and grow...so our meat wouldn't exist without flowering plants.
We could probably eat fish...but all the time? That would get pretty boring!
How about cotton in our t-shirts, undies, and bed sheets? Nope...not without flowering plants. (*side note: If you've never seen blossoms on a cotton plant, you are missing out! They come in the prettiest shades of pinks and yellows!)
You get the picture?
My kids were pretty good at recognizing the benefits of flowering plants in our discussion today - probably because they get to help garden a little in the summers.
...And, they know their momma absolutely LOVES flowers - that totally makes them important, right? :)
So...for our Botany lesson today, we performed a flower dissection on a rose from the back yard.
Truth be told, sometimes our little Science labs wind up being a crazy headache, especially with the little ones...but, today, I still have enough sanity to want to write about it, which means everyone was interested enough to be attentive - SUCCESS! ;)
(I DID have to steer our conversation back to flowers after Silas, my 5 year old, asked if he could go "kill a frog so we could dissect that" instead! ..."Ummmm, no, Big, we don't get to do that in Botany - that has to wait until Biology." )
Today, during our flower dissection, we started learning about how flowers make seeds...and that's important in learning about a whole lot of other things to come (pollination, seed dispersal, fruits)!
After our work, I sent them outside to soak up some much-needed SUNSHINE (it's been raining for a week here, but the sun finally peeked through today!)...and I encouraged them to look around them while they played, and to try not to take things around us for granted...
..and to "Praise God for angiosperms!"
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