Sensory Observations

Enhances SEEd standards: K.2.1, 1.2.2

Student Investigation Goal: Use my senses to observe living things.

Before the field trip, students virtually travel the Garden to discover how using their senses can help them make observations and learn about the natural world.

While at Red Butte Garden, students will explore living things using their sense of sight, touch, taste, smell and hearing to practice making observations. Students use their senses to discover the natural world and find patterns among living things and what they need to survive.

Garden Educator Activities

• Bee observant: Use senses like touch, sight, and hearing to observe a living organism: bees. Explore features on a bee and how they help a bee to survive.
• Tasty leaves: Use senses like sight, touch, and taste to observe living organisms: plants. Explore features on plants that help them survive. Explore features on animals that help them eat to grow and survive.

Habitats

Enhances SEEd standards: K.2.2, 1.2.2, 2.2.1, 2.2.2

Student Investigation Goal: How do living things survive in different habitats?

Before the field trip, students virtually travel the Garden and explore what a habitat is and which ones can be found at Red Butte Garden.

While at the Garden, students will explore different habitats in person. They will see how living things in the Garden have features that help them to survive in each habitat.

Garden Educator Activities

• Habitat Square: Students closely observe how habitats are all sizes.
• Animal Clues: Students use senses to look for clues and signs of animals in a habitat and learn how external features on animals help them to survive in a certain habitat.

Flowers & Seeds

Enhances SEEd standards: K.2.2, 1.2.2, 2.2.3

Student Investigation Goal: How do plants survive and reproduce?

Before the field trip, students virtually travel the Garden and learn about flowers, pollinators, and fruits.

While at the Garden, students interact with living organisms and observe ways that plants can reproduce and survive. Students observe how a bee’s body helps to pollinate a plant, what parts of a flower are attractive to animals, and how a seed’s features help it travel.

Garden Educator Activities

• Pollinators: Live pollinators are observed in the Garden. Students mimic a pollinator to experiment how pollinators aid in pollination and the features they have to help them transfer pollen from flower to flower.
• Fruit Dispersal: Why do fruits have different shapes? Students test out fruits to see how shapes help them to travel and disperse their seeds.

Phenology

Enhances SEEd standards: 3.2.1, 4.1.1, 5.3.1, 6.4.4

Student Investigation Goal: What life cycle changes are happening at Red Butte Garden right now?

At Red Butte Garden we track and study nature’s calendar, and during this tour students will too! Phenology is looking closely at life cycle stages to see how plants and animals react to changes in seasons and climates.

Before the field trip, students virtually travel the Garden to observe seasonal changes and practice monitoring specific plant life cycle stages, similar to the Community Science monitoring at Red Butte Garden.

While at Red Butte Garden, students observe changes that are happening right now! They will gain knowledge about the life cycle stages (phenophases) they are studying (Open Flower, Ripe Fruit) Students will be able to spot and communicate detailed examples of plant life cycle changes, as well as construct explanations on how the environment and temperature changes may affect the changes in living things.

Garden Educator Activities

• Open Flowers: The Open Flower is the focus. Students will be observing flowers in different stages and take a closer look at one flower (alstroemeria) to communicate its different stages. Differences in flower stages include opening of petals and pollen release. Nectar is tasted.
• Ripe Fruit: Students learn how to identify and record a cluster of fruit on a rose. Students then hunt for other ripe fruits in the area.

Ethnobotany

Enhances SEEd standards: 4.1.1, 4.1.2, 5.3.2, 6.4.2, 6.4.4

Student Investigation Goal: How do plants and humans help each other?

Ethnobotany is often only thought about in a historical context, forgetting how much we still interact with and depend on plants in more modern day-to-day lives.

Before the field trip, students virtually travel through the Garden to discover how humans use and interact with plants!

While at Red Butte Garden, students explore as Ethnobotanists making observations on plants and how plant parts may attract or repel them.

Garden Educator Activities

• Taste: How do plants attract or repel humans with taste? Different plants are sampled and then discussed. Do different flavors benefit plants?
• Cordage: Plants can be attractive and useful to humans. Their structure can help us survive! Students search the area for plants that have features that could be beneficial in rope making and then cordage is made.

Matter Movement

Enhances SEEd standards: 3.2.4, 3.2.5, 4.1.1, 4.1.2, 5.3.2, 5.3.3, 6.4.1, 6.4.3

Student Investigation Goal: How are different organisms connected at Red Butte Garden?

Before the field trip, students virtually travel the Garden in different habitats and take an “organism’s-eye-view” of matter moving through a portion of a food web.

While at Red Butte Garden, students physically travel in different environments to experience and witness matter movement and how organisms are connected.

Garden Educator Activities

• Producers: Producers and their features are observed in the desert environment. What adaptations do producers have to survive in a desert? How might producers help with matter movement? How might an animal, like a coyote help a producer?
• Consumers: Animal skulls and signs are observed. Students build skills to look closely for animal signs and predict how animals are connected to each other.

Water Conservation

Enhances SEEd standards: 3.2.5, 3.2.6, 4.1.1, 5.3.4, 6.3.1, 6.4.1

Student Investigation Goal: How do living things survive in dry, desert climates?

Before the field trip, students virtually explore our Water Conservation Garden and discover how plants and planting methods can help save water.

While at Red Butte Garden, students observe the Water Conservation Garden and structures that help plants survive in a dry, desert-like environment. Students can begin considering plants that might be beneficial in their own water conservation garden someday.

Garden Educator Activities

• Plant adaptations: Students explore the Water Conservation Garden and what plants have to help them survive in the desert. Students dissect and explore plant material and build predictions about what could help plants to better survive in a desert. Then students match their predictions to plant part cards.
• Be a Gardener: Students use what they’ve learned about plant adaptations and what they’ve witnessed in the Water Conservation Garden and pretend to be a gardener by selecting plants they would like in their own water conservation garden. Students then observe plants that have unique features to survive in a desert. Plus, some are edible!