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Free Days at the Denver Botanical Gardens

Any Colorado homeschoolers out there?  Free admission at the Denver Botanical Gardens happens 9 more times this year, with the next one being next Friday, May 7th.  Check out the upcoming dates here and begin planning your summer field trip!  Friday is also the Spring Plant Sale, check out the other upcoming events here.

Nature study activities you might consider:

  • Bring your nature notebooks or field journals and make sketches of what you find in bloom.  Include the common name and scientific name of the plants you sketch, along with the date and the weather conditions.
  • Go on a plant and flower scavenger hunt with pre-prepared lists or a field guide.
  • If you are planning a garden this season, use the high-altitude database to research what to plant and where and how to plant it.
  • Observe the ecosystem:  make note of what wildlife you see (birds, insects, squirrels,…) and identify what they are eating and how they fit into the ecosystem of the gardens.
  • Use the opportunity to learn some vocabulary before you go, especially for the younger set not studying biology or botany just yet.  Deciduous, evergreen, perennial, annual, root, stem, stamen, pistil, leaf, pollen.  Pull out a botany or biology text for the appropriate age level and make vocabulary lists to define in advance and then find when you get there.
  • Prepare a unit study on gardening.  Kick it off with a field trip, then continue to use your own garden as a place of learning throughout the year (or the growing season!)

Do you have any suggestions on how you have used gardening in your home school to study science?  Post them for us!