Passion Vine and Flower
One day I was walking around the yard, and was inspired by a leaf to introduce a lesson in observing nature. My student and I walked around the yard picking samples of "5's" in nature, specifically on our trees and bushes. This was fun because my student was 5 years old. Some samples were one leaf with 5 divisions, such as this passion vine leaf(above) and the maple and grape leaf (below),
and some had five separate leaves at the end of the stem (or vine, in this case) such as this blackberry (above).
We had to look hard in this wild geranium leaf to see that it, too had five divisions.
I know all of these plants have names, and all the of the leaves and their divisions and non divisions have names, but that will be a lesson for another time. Our point for this one was simply to stop and look more closely at what is around us, especially in our own yard.
