Thank the Lord they didn’t pick the cactus or the cotton boll!

Yesterday was the second time I’ve taught the Texas Symbols class at our Homeschool Co-op. I knew I’d be hard-pressed to beat the Texas State Dinosaur lesson I prepared 2 weeks ago. That’s one thing about putting my ‘all’ into a project; it sets the bar higher and higher. I am my own competition; which isn’t always good since I’m also my own worst critic.

If you cross your eyes and squint, it’s a Bluebonnet.

No really, I swear it is.

Next on the Texas Symbols list was the Texas State Flower, the Bluebonnet. Teaching about Bluebonnets certainly had its own built in challenge. The primary challenge? It’s a flower and the majority of my Kindergarten through Second Grade class are boys. Secondary to the first challenge, well…it’s no dinosaur.

Why did I have to start with dinosaurs? For CRYING OUT LOUD!

Anyway…

Initially, I struggled to find an ‘active’ way to give the Bluebonnet its due as the state flower. As I read up on my subject more and more it really ‘grew’ on me and a lesson began to form. My lessons are 50 minutes long, and I know you’ll be surprised when I say this…

THEY ARE STRUCTURED.

I can hear you laughing from there, by the way.

The class goes something like this:

Lesson (10 Minutes)
Relay or Active Learning (10 Minutes)
Story (10 Minutes)
Craft (15 Minutes)
Review (5 Minutes)

Teaching keeps me from becoming stagnant in my own learning. This lesson busted a myth I’ve long held – that picking Bluebonnets is illegal.

Nope, not true.

I also learned that Texas has FIVE state flowers, not just one – but they are all different varieties of the Bluebonnet.

And finally, I learned Lady Bird Johnson (First Lady to President Lyndon B. Johnson) is the reason you can see Texas Bluebonnets thick as thieves along the state’s highways from about March to May; it is her ‘legacy’ of sorts. She persuaded the government of the state of Texas to seed bluebonnets and other wildflowers along the highways throughout the state.

The kid really got ‘into’ the relay, which involved spelling out the word Bluebonnet with letter tiles. I divided up the letter tiles into two containers, making sure there were enough letters to spell Bluebonnet in both containers, and landscape-printed two papers with the word  B l u e b o n n e t  across them.

The kids were separated into two teams and instructed to run across the field, dump out the cup of letters (if they were the first person), find the right letter tile to match whichever letter in the word their team was on at the moment, and then run back to their team – releasing the next one to run and repeat the process. We played it three times and by the time we finished the kids were worn out and ready for a story.

I read Tomie dePaola’s, The Legend of The Bluebonnet, stopping to answer questions and discuss details they didn’t understand as we went along.

And then? It was CRAFT time.

From as far back as I can remember, whenever we did Texas History or Texas Symbols in school we made paper tissue Bluebonnets. I think it is an elementary age rite of passage for Texans. Not wanting the kids to miss out on such a monumental point in their lives, that is exactly what we did.

I like to close out a lesson with a short review, and because I love building ‘rewards’ into my reviews, I made a special ‘something’ for the Review Rewards.

First, I purchased a package of Blow Pops.

Then, I used some of the blue tissue paper I bought for the craft project to roll-up the Blow Pops…

…and secured the ends with matching blue thread.

After locating the oldest glue gun known to man, I glued the Blow Pop wraps to a presentation board.

Once they were all affixed, I filled in the gaps with squinched up pieces of tissue paper (basically a larger version of what the kids would do in their craft time.)

You should know my glue gun is probably the first glue gun ever made. This one was purchased by my mother back when glue guns didn’t have adjustable heat and everyone that used them KNEW they would eventually require a skin graft.

Once the extra pieces were glued on, I drew and colored the stems and leaves.

DONE!

None of the kids even noticed I was disguising Blow Pops, but were thrilled when they were able to come rip-off their ‘surprise’ after answering one of the review questions right.

I really was surprised by how well the subject matter went over, how much ‘stuck’ in their minds for the review, and how much I learned about my own state flower.

I’m tinkering with the idea of introducing the Texas State FOLK DANCE next.

Square dance anyone?

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