New School Montessori students in 4th and 5th grade have been sketching pollinators at work. Auguste Renoir and Mary Cassatt had their share of fidgety subjects, often painting children in their famous works, but that didn’t compare to the challenge the students faced as they observed and sketched these wonders of nature busily moving from one plant to the next in their mission to complete the fertilization process.
The Learning Garden sits conveniently next door to the Ginkgo House, where 4th, 5th, and 6th graders can see a variety of beautiful flowers, vegetables, plants, and trees. Students took a flower from the Learning Garden to sketch and then dissected that flower in class. Scissors in hand, each student carefully cut into their flower as their botany teacher helped them find and label each part.
Understanding pollination and fertilization helped students appreciate the difficult work pollinators do for our world; we literally could not live without their important work. Students loved mixing art with science.
