When teachers make plans for their year-long cultural and science lessons, botany lessons are often grouped by season: leaves and seeds in autumn, flowers and fruit in spring. Some teachers may offer zoology or other science lessons in winter, given that, on the surface, there doesn’t seem to be much going on in the plant world during these months (we’ll come back to this).

There is much focus in the Montessori botany curriculum on classified nomenclature: three-part cards (picture, label, definition) that children match and often copy into a notebook. This material includes parts of the plant, parts of the leaf, parts of the roots, the stem, the flower, and the seed. Once teachers and students get through this initial series, there are more: types of the parts and parts of the parts (types of leaf margins, parts of the stamen, specialized stems, accessory structures in fruit, etc.).

This work supports the Elementary child’s developmental predisposition to classify and systematize their knowledge, much like categorizing books in a library, thus consolidating their collection of seemingly unrelated facts absorbed during their Early Childhood years. And yet, it can be meaningless and dull for children (and teachers) to go through the botany nomenclature part by part; an emphasis on learning the names of parts without applying that knowledge to observations and descriptions may render this work monotonous and, in the mind of the child, irrelevant.

It is more aligned with Montessori’s emphasis on hands-on learning, therefore, not to use the nomenclature cards to introduce any part of the plant, and certainly not as the focal point of any lesson. Teachers will find children more engaged with botany studies if they introduce concepts using live or preserved plants (even in winter), then utilize the three-part cards to review and reinforce new vocabulary. For example, children will likely remember–and find more interesting–the difference between palmate veins and pinnate veins by examining and describing maple and birch leaves, respectively, then matching with the cards as a review. Sorting a large collection of leaves accordingly further consolidates this new knowledge.

The nomenclature work is so extensive that some teachers decide there is neither time nor necessity for further botany studies. Circling back to our point about this work potentially dousing a child’s interest in plants, we suggest alternative approaches to botany lessons, especially during winter, when it can be challenging to keep plant studies alive. Creating lessons around themes, a plant of the month, or visiting plants (Spears, 2010) adds variety, interest, and what may be a much-needed break from the three-part cards.

One example of a theme for late autumn and winter, with ideas for related lessons that could last a month or longer, is a study of conifer trees (cone-bearing seed plants, e.g., pine, fir, spruce, hemlock, redwood/sequoia, cedar/cypress, tamarack/larch; juniper/yew). Some questions to be explored might include:

• What is the difference between deciduous and conifer trees (and deciduous conifer trees)?
  • locate, sketch, and describe three deciduous and three conifer trees
  • use the senses of sight, touch, sound, and smell to sort plant material into deciduous or evergreen
• Are all conifers evergreens?
• Where do conifers live and how are they adapted to live there?
• How and where do conifers bear their seeds?
• Do conifers produce flowers?

Other related areas to explore:

• Identification of types of conifers by variation in needles, cones, trunks, bark (This example of a dichotomous key is region-specific, but local keys are readily available.)
  • Sort a collection of sprigs and cones based on the tree from which they came
• Conifers’ needles or scale-like foliage as an adaptation to cold weather
• The gymnosperm lineage on the Tree of Life
• More advanced students might enjoy exploring the Cal Poly Humboldt 3D Digital Herbarium. This example highlights the Douglas Fir, but other conifers can be found on the Collections tab.

Botany studies can be further enhanced with connections to other areas of the curriculum. After identifying the types of conifers in their local ecosystem, students can research the following concepts:

• How, historically, indigenous people used different parts of conifers for shelters, boats, carvings, rope, baskets, clothing, food, and medicine (this region-specific example of the use of cedar includes suggestions for a sensitive approach to this topic for non-indigenous teachers, together with an extensive list of cross-curricular connections and teacher resources)
• Which trees were used, and how, in early European settlements
• How other cultures around the world utilize conifer trees and their products
• what trees are harvested today, and for what purposes
• Which animals depend on conifers, and how, in students’ local ecosystem
• How and by whom our local, state, and national forests are managed (region-specific examples are readily available)

There is so much more to the living world of plants than the parts of which they are made. Finding alternatives to marching through the nomenclature systematically can add meaning and relevance to botany lessons, thereby transforming what is sometimes dreary “parts of” work to an exciting exploration of the Plant Kingdom. Next time, we’ll take a close look at and offer lesson ideas on the poinsettia, our plant of the month for December.

References

Spears, P. (2010). Plant Lessons: introducing children to form and function. Corvallis, OR: Big Picture Science.