Living Root Garden School • Creatures Great & Small • Name: ______________________
🔍 The Case
The case of the flower that turned into an apple — something carried yellow dust from flower to flower. Find the courier.
Watch a bee's back legs: see those orangey-yellow lumps? That's packed pollen, carried in special baskets called corbiculae. Pollen is the yellow powdery stuff flowers need to swap before they can make fruit — and nectar is the sweet drink the bee came for.
Look for visitors on flowers blooming from spring through fall, and try native wildflowers first — local pollinators grew up alongside them, like home cooking instead of mystery leftovers.
Rule out the lookalikes: a hoverfly looks like a bee and hovers like a tiny helicopter, but it can't sting — and it's a pollinator too. A bumblebee is round, fuzzy, and loud, and it buzz-pollinates tomatoes, blueberries, and eggplants by shaking the pollen loose.
Don't forget the other shifts: butterflies sip through a straw-like tongue called a proboscis and taste with their feet, and moths work nights on pale, sweet-smelling flowers like jasmine and honeysuckle.
Ask: Which flower in your yard will get the most visitors in ten minutes? Write your guess before you start watching.
Try: Spend an afternoon watching which flowers get visitors. Sit still by one flower for ten minutes, tally every visitor, then try another flower and rank the menu from busiest to quietest.
Stretch (Teens & Growers ready for more): Run a visit-rate study: count visits per flower per ten minutes on two flower types, on two different days, and chart the numbers so you can compare them.
Tell: Fill in the log below — date, what you saw, what surprised you — then finish this sentence in words or a labeled drawing: “The ___ flower got the most visitors because ___.”
Date
What I saw
What surprised me
Date: ____/____/____
Date: ____/____/____
Date: ____/____/____
Date: ____/____/____
🛠️ Build It
Draw the most popular flower in your yard as a busy restaurant, with its visitors lined up outside.
🗣️ Be the Teacher
Show someone a bee on a flower and tell them what the bee is carrying, where it's going, and why the flower needs it — in your own words.
🏅 I can…
☐ I can spot a pollinator at work on a flower.
Portfolio check
☐ Guide read
☐ Case solved
☐ Ask, Try, Tell done
☐ Build It filed: Ranked pollinator menu
☐ Taught someone
☐ Badge earned: I can spot a pollinator at work on a flower.
Living Root Garden School • livingrootgarden.com/homeschool/ • Free — print as many copies as you like. File this sheet with your portfolio log. Sprouts do the Read, the Case, and Build It; Growers try the Ask, Try, Tell stretch when ready; Teens do the whole packet — including teaching it back.