AGRICULTURAL NATURE STUDY OUTLINES 
89 
We must not forget this bird. Let us watch and see if it 
stays with us the year around. I am going to ask you each 
month if you have seen a Brewer blackbird and if so, where? 
Poems. Mother Goose Rhyme (Four and Twenty Black¬ 
birds). 
II. Second Grade 
The Nasturtium. 
Aims. (1) To teach the common cultivated flowers and their use. 
(2) To teach the relation of insects to flowers. 
(3) To impress the names of the parts of the flowers on 
the children. 
(4) To get the children to observe flowers from bud to 
fruit. 
Materials. Each pupil provided with: 
Piece of plant in leaf, bud, and flower. 
Piece of plant in leaf, flower and seed. 
Method of Procedure. 
Does any one in the class know the name of this flower? 
-, you may tell us its name. How do you know 
the flower? Can any one else in the class tell me how they 
know it from other flowers? When I was a child we used the 
leaves for cups and we called the water we put in them silver. 
Try it some time and see if it does not look like drops of silver; 
of course we knew the names of our cups. 
Let us examine the petals of the flower. What reason can 
you see for the broader upper petals ? The overlapping of the 
edges of the petals? Of what does it make you think? (The 
roof of a house.) 
Can you see any reason why it opens at the side instead 
of at the top? (The rain can not get in and spoil the nectar 
and the pollen.) 
How are the buds protected? Are the sepals of any use 
to the flower after it blossoms? Of what use? In which is 
the stem longer, the full-sized blossom or the tiny bud? Can 
you think of any reason why the blossom should have the 
longer stem? (To attract bees the blossom must be well above 
the leaves. The bud has nothing to offer to the bees and 
humming birds.) 
Notice all the changes in the flower, the drying up of the 
petals and the sepals, and the falling of the same, the growth 
of the inside of the flower, the ovary, until it finally matures 
