Title: Living Water
Subject: Fairy Tales-Science and reproduction
Objective: After reading the fairy tale and partipating in the activity, the children should have a deeper understanding of reproduction in plants and how this tale used fantasy to describe it.
Materials: Copy of the poem, Permission Slips, Paper Lunch Bags, paper and markers
Preparations: Today you will be going on a field trip to a local park. (If this is not possible, use your playground and school grounds.) Be sure to hand out permission slips in advance and prepare the children for their adventure. Your lessons should have studied seed plants, flowering reproduction and basic concepts surrounding these subjects. Children should know that plants reproduce by seeds which are from female and male counterparts. Seeds can be found in different places in plants and trees. Here they will find that seeds for certain trees are found in cones.
Lesson: Create a Magic Circle in the back of your classroom. This is a place where children and teacher sit in a circle for open discussion. Use this time to read the fairy tale Living Water. Discuss the vocabulary words which they may have trouble understanding, Tofalar, bog and sable. After reading the tale, ask the children:
Now that you have discovered why these trees stay green all year round, tell your students that they will learn more about these trees.
Activity: Take the students to your playground. Go outside and pick up different cones to put into the paper bags which you have given out. When you have completed this, come back into the classroom. (If your location does not have any conifer trees, then collect pine cones to bring into your classroom from other sources.) Divide your class into small groups of about five children each. Ask each group to answer the following questions:
Ask the groups to divide different cones into categories according to their appearance, how tall, fat or skinny they are. Use this opportunity to use a chart to divide them into firs, pines, hemlocks, spruces, cedars and larches depending on the types of cones. (Allow the children to look at a chart that you have copied from a book to help them not focus too much on this aspect of the lesson.)
Explain that now that you have found out where the cones come from and the types of cones, you are ready to explore what these cones are used for. Why does a tree have cones? For decoration? Since you have just studied seeds and reproduction in plants, it will be easy for the children to understand that the seeds for reproduction in these conifers are in the cones. Just like the petals on flowers protect the seeds, the hard covering of the cone protects the seeds of the conifers. Ovules on the scales are fertilized by pollen which becomes seeds. Cones then mature at the end of two years, drop from the tree or remain attached and shed their seeds.
Assessment:Present each group with this challenging problem to think about what the cone is used for and the benefits that it has- Many plants produce seeds in flowers. In many of these plants the flowers change to a fruit. The seeds are found inside the fruit. The seeds of the cones that produce trees are found inside the scales of the cones. What advantage do you think seeds produced in fruit have over seeds produced in cones?
Follow this up with a conclusion in your Magic Circle. Ask the children to share their answers, defend thier choice and explore the issue.
Note to Teachers: This lesson requires a lot of background knowledge of reproduction and seeds. You may also want to use this lesson to integrate into other subjects such as history or literature. Use the following links to help you in your search:
| China the Beautiful | Info on China | Tour in China |
| Chinese Proverbs | Pine Information | Conifer Society |