Mum Show

As summer air turns cool, mums start showing their colours in our gardens. Many houses in the neighbourhood around school have these little bursts of colour that last long into the fall months. Recognizing these flowers and seasonal importance of them can be a lot of fun.  Going for colour-hunt walks or taking a trip to the local Mum Show are two ways to celebrate the beauty of the changing seasons.

For the past few years my students and I have taken a local bus to visit the Mum Show at a greenhouse downtown. The Mum Show displays a variety of colours and species of mums - much more than the usual garden varieties we see around town. There is also a year-round tropical greenhouse. Students always bring their cameras and take many beautiful pictures of themselves, their friends and the flowers.

The tropical greenhouse houses many plants from countries my students are from. There are birds, geckos, fish and a turtle. The humidity in the room, the fresh air, and sound of the flowing water make for a relaxing and peaceful environment. This provides an opportunity to reconnect with the nature that is familiar.

My students use the time at the greenhouse to explore and experience it alone or with their peers. In my mind, it is such a great opportunity to experience a part of our city - a part that they may have never heard of or seen before. The actual structured language aspect comes afterwards in class. This year, I also wandered alone through the greenhouses snapping shots such as the ones below to use as the language focus the following day in class.

With these photos we reviewed the names of the colours (red, yellow, pink, etc.) and put them in sentences such as, "I see red flowers", and so on. From there, we sequenced the photos in a wall pocket chart, wrote sentences, matched the sentences and copied them onto small sentence strips. Students then created books for this story. 

Outcomes: name colours, sequence pictures from top to bottom and left to right, read words, copy words from a distance, listen to and follow instructions.