Thursday, May 29, 2008

Field Notes and Homemade Herbarium


My inspiration for tomorrow's class comes from a twofold need:

1) The need to really teach concrete information, regarding both botany and herbal medicine

2) The need to create something fun as the learning context

OK and three - the selfish desire to the above

Anyway ......... we are going to attempt to start an Herbarium. I really want the kids to get into deeper field notes ... so I've created a sort of checklist that they can fill out as the records part - because this is less time consuming than having them all write out sentences and detailed notes. We will also cover what we know about the usage of the plant.

We'll be collecting the corresponding specimens and filing them in a painter's journal - I didn't have time to collect newspapers and corrugated cardboard. I hope it works!

Here are the Documents we'll be using for Field Notes. Keep in mind these are children ages 7-11, not scientists, so some more advanced stuff is omitted. Although if my GPS was working I think that would be cool to use to record the Lat. and Long.

Monograph One
Monograph Two

Have you done this yet? Do share!!!!

Here are some good links for DIY Herbariums:

Waddell School
Herbarium.edu
Herbarium


Wish me Luck!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Ahhhh, a fellow "ru". My family didn't stay but a couple of years in Fairfield, but moved to a smaller ashram in Texas. I knew there had to be more of us out there.

I dare you to tell me your mantra:)
Just Kidding