THE PARTS OF THE FLOWER EXPLAINED TO CHILDREN: FUNCTIONS AND COMPOSITION - PARENTHOOD

The flower and its parts: simple images and concepts for primary school children

At the end of the summer it is a classic to run to finish those tasks that remain to be done, before returning to class in September. History, geography, mathematics, literature, science ... how many subjects to recover! Help the children to return to school peacefully: go over a bit of botany with us, with cards and pictures on the parts of the flower. Have you not yet decided on the tablet as a homework aid? Watch the video for a professional opinion.

The parts of the flower

A flower is a beautiful gift from nature: it is fragrant, it is colorful, but it is also a complex living organism. What is the flower made of and what terms is it correct to use to indicate its different parts in botany? These notions are learned already from the first grades of primary school; today we will review them together, so that we can propose the lesson to the children of the house.
As you can see in the drawing below, the flower is made up of some parts, all very important and to remember! Let's see in order the structure of a flower from bottom to top.

Starting from the bottom end it can be seen that the flower is supported by the peduncle, which unites the flower to the branches of the plant. The peduncle is the entire lower part of the flower, it supports it and is what allows it to remain attached to the plant. Just above there is the receptacle, the swelling of the peduncle. At the top of the peduncle we find the sepals, the green leaves that surround the flower when it has not yet blossomed; their function is to protect the internal parts of the flower. The sepals together form. the chalice of the flower.
The internal colored leaves are obviously the petals and their whole is called corolla.

Inside the corolla we find the first reproductive organs of the plant: the stamens, or the male organs of the flower. They are composed of filaments with a yellow and swollen end, called anther. The color is given by a yellow powder that we all know: pollen.
Exactly in the center of the flower is the female organ, the pistil. At the base it consists of an enlarged part called the ovary, containing the ova, and in the upper part there is instead the stigma, thin and covered with a viscous substance.

The function of the flower

The flowers, among all the parts that make up the plant, have the most important function, that is, the reproductive one. Their task is in fact to preserve the species and ensure that it multiplies.
How does a plant reproduce? Through the seeds. And where are these seeds formed? Inside the flower.
It is good to remember that not all plants have flowers: they are called angiosperms (think of aquatic plants, herbaceous plants, creepers and lianas). Despite the absence of flowers they can reproduce the same, but in this case the seed is not contained in the flower and for this reason the plants are called gymnosperms. For all other plant species the flower is always the reproductive part of the plant and must go to reproduce the seeds to give life to new seedlings of the same species.

As we have just seen, the flower contains reproductive organs suitable for this purpose: sepals and petals, on the outside, are the sterile components, while the pistils and stamens are the fertile ones.
We speak of tepals when it is not possible to distinguish the sepals from the petals.

How does the reproduction process of a flower take place? Through fertilization, an event that occurs when pollen reaches the eggs present in the ovary, after pollination.

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How pollination occurs

Pollination is a process that involves several actors: flowers, bees and even the wind. In particular, without bees, pollination would not take place and there would be far fewer flowers in the world! They are the fundamental agents that transport the pollen from one flower to another. The pollen grains cover the anthers and when they detach they do so because they are transported to the stigma of another flower and from there they descend inside the pistil up to to reach the ovules present in the ovary.The ovules are transformed into seeds and the ovary into fruit.
Pollination is set in motion mainly thanks to pollinating insects such as bees, but also the wind can carry pollen, which however is much less effective than the action of insects.

How to make the explanation simple for a child of kindergarten or primary school? By transforming this event into a story, where the protagonist is a nice little bee.
Make way for the imagination, but here are the elements that must not be missing in the story: the working bee that comes out of the hive to carry out its task as a nectar collector, a field of flowers, a colorful and fragrant flower and its corolla, full of pollen for the little bee. The nectar she collects from the flower and the pollen that gets entangled between her legs, but also the other flowers on which she will rest. Only one grain on the stigma is enough to start pollination, so it is possible to tell children that the worker insect is able to pollinate a large number of small flowers in a short time!

Fruits and seeds: what they are and what they are for

After having explained the various parts of the flower, its precious function and the process that leads the flowers to reproduce, it is correct to also hook the lesson related to the fruits. Here are some basic notions that may be useful to you.
Following fertilization, the flower withers and the petals fall off. The fertilized egg turns into seed, while the ovary grows and gives life to the fruit. Remember to explain how everything started from a small flower and that seeds, fruits and flowers are closely linked.

For a child it is sufficient to say that the seed has the task of germinating and giving new life to a plant. The fruit, on the other hand, which surrounds it, must protect the seed and favor its spread. The fruits are many and have different shapes, but in general they can be grouped into three categories: dried fruits, fleshy fruits and false fruits. In the dry ones (chestnut) the ovary becomes leathery, in the fleshy ones (pumpkin, tomato, orange) the ovary turns into a succulent pulp, while the false fruits are the result of the transformation not only of the ovary but also of other parts of the flower, see the petals. In this last category we find apples and strawberries. There is also a separate category consisting of cluster fruits where many fruits coexist, such as in the cluster of grapes and the ear.

An intelligent child may wonder how the seeds inside a fruit do to give birth to a new plant: the simplest and clearest answer is that with the fall into fertile soil the seed can develop or by taking the seed directly with the hands and planting it in the earth. .

Parts of the fruit

Just like the flower, the fruit also has some standard parts that can be traced back to all varieties and it is right for children to memorize them. Here is what they could learn in class about the parts of the fruit; get ready with them!

At the upper end of the fruit there is the petiole, which holds the fruit attached to the branch. The outermost part of a fruit is the skin, the shell that protects it and which at times can also be eaten.
Fruits are made up of three layers: exocarp, mesocarp and endocarp and their whole can be called "fruit" or pericarp.
The mesocarp, if present in the fruit depending on the type of belonging, is none other than the pulp, the sweetest and sweetest part of the food. It is rich in vitamins, fiber and water and must both protect and nourish the seed. also the part that is normally eaten as a whole.
The seed is enclosed in the endocarp, a small cell that can contain a single seed or several seeds.

That's more or less all; with this basic information the pupil is ready to start off again in the classroom during the science hour. For the little ones he can limit us to remembering the terms stalk, peel, seed and pulp.

Educational cards on flowers for elementary school children

To teach all the parts of the flower or a fruit to children it is possible to use various didactic tools that can transform teaching into play.
Definitely recommended the didactic cards for primary school, for the second, third and fourth classes: exercises of combinations, connections, insertions with labels ... the modalities are many. Usually they are drawings to be completed where the names of the various parts are missing or images to be colored differently according to the different parts of the flower. This type of learning card is very easy to find online and to print, so even those children with little desire to study can be easily helped from home.

For older kids there are interesting alternatives for learning these scientific notions, such as some quizzes and themed videos on Youtube. In the first case they will have to answer true / false to some questions or try to match the part of a flower according to the function. In the second, however, it is a cartoon video that explains all the pollination operations in the background and at the same time the parts of the flowers.

Look in the mini gallery below for some examples of didactic cards on flower parts for primary school.