The Mystery Pollinator!

This morning my local television news station broadcast a segment about hummingbirds and when to put out hummingbird feeders. We always put out a few hummingbird feeders every summer so I watched the segment with slightly more interest than some of the other filler stories they show every morning. One little aspect of the story was to remind viewers that hummingbirds play a role in the ecosystem as pollinators. That little fact reminded me of a SciShow Kids video from last spring about flowers and pollination. 

Flowers and Their Pollinators is a cute video that explains to kids how bees, butterflies, bats, and birds help to pollinate flowers. The video concludes with the revelation that hummingbirds are the mystery pollinator in the story. Click here to jump to that segment of the video. 

Applications for Education
Before showing this video to students I'd ask them to share their ideas about how plants grow and spread to new areas. I'd also ask them think about what makes flowers bloom. As I'm learning from my own kids who wonder about these things, kids come up with some interesting thoughts about these kinds of questions. This video offers answers that little kids can understand.

Flowers of North America

Project Noah is a globally collaborative project to which anyone can contribute. On Project Noah you can share pictures and stories of the plants and the animals that you observe in your neighborhood.

Project Noah has a section titled Missions in which you can find projects that you can contribute to. The Missions ask people to make contributions of images and observations about a specific animal, plant, or region. I've just joined the Flowers of North America mission to share the pictures of flowers blooming along stream banks that I will take while fly fishing this spring.

Applications for Education
Project Noah has an Education section in which teachers can register their classrooms. Once registered teachers can assign Missions to their students and track their students' observations.