Students!
Use your senses to explore diverse colors, textures and shapes in the plant world.

What To Do:

1. Using a box of many crayons, try to find as many colors as you see on the screen. If you do not see the exact color, blend two or more colors together. Add white to a dark brown to create a light brown. Yellow and blue make green. Try to get the colors as close as possible to the ones on the screen. Be sure to put all the colors on one piece of paper.

2. The class may be divided into two groups, to be led by a parent and the teacher during this activity.

3. Search the school grounds, a park, or a botanical garden to find as many colors on your card as you can. Look on trees, bushes, grasses and anywhere else your teacher tells you to. Visit a garden or plant collection with a wide range of colors in leaves, flowers, fruit and bark. Be sure to stay within the boundaries of the space defined by your teacher. Take down notes as you are exploring. After you are done answer these questions:

What colors were most common?
What were most difficult to find?
Did you discover any that you didn't expect to find?

Choose another garden or plant collection for a leaf diversity search, such as an herb garden, perennial garden or shrub collection. Use the 'World of Plants' checklist on p.11 in the student journals. Search for leaves that have the features listed on their checklists; check each one as they discover examples of it. You may also add features to the checklist based on your own observations and draw your discoveries.

Share your findings:

What leaves did you find unusual and why?
What were their favorites?
What features did they add to the checklist?