A K-5 URBAN POLLINATOR CURRICULUM Growing a Wild NYC LESSON 1: HABITAT HUNT The National Wildlife Federation Uniting all Americans to ensure wildlife thrive in a rapidly changing world Through educational programs focused on conservation and environmental knowledge, the National Wildlife Federation provides ways to create a lasting base of environmental literacy, stewardship, and problem-solving skills for today’s youth. Growing a Wild NYC: A K-5 Urban Pollinator Curriculum was made possible through the generous support of our funders: The Seth Sprague Educational and Charitable Foundation is a private foundation that supports the arts, housing, basic needs, the environment, and education including professional development and school-day enrichment programs operating in public schools. The Office of the New York State Attorney General and the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation through the Greenpoint Community Environmental Fund. Written by Nina Salzman. Edited by Sarah Ward and Emily Fano. Designed by Leslie Kameny, Kameny Design. © 2020 National Wildlife Federation. Permission granted for non-commercial educational uses only. All rights reserved. September - January Lesson 1: Habitat Hunt Page 8 Lesson 2: What is a Pollinator? Page 20 Lesson 3: What is Pollination? Page 30 Lesson 4: Why Pollinators? Page 39 Lesson 5: Bee Survey Page 45 Lesson 6: Monarch Life Cycle Page 55 Lesson 7: Plants for Pollinators Page 67 Lesson 8: Flower to Seed Page 76 Lesson 9: Winter Survival Page 85 Lesson 10: Bee Homes Page 97 February - June Lesson 11: Amazing Adaptations Page 108 Lesson 12: Comparing Bees and Butterflies Page 118 Lesson 13: Magnificent Monarch Migration Page 128 Lesson 14: The Milkweed Community Page 138 Lesson 15: Habitat Heroes Page 151 Lesson 16: A Pollinator Food Web Page 159 Lesson 17: Pollinator Pathways Page 165 Lesson 18: Urban Schoolyard Habitat Audit Page 173 Lesson 19: Urban Schoolyard Habitat Action Plan Page 185 Lesson 20: Celebrating the Urban Schoolyard Habitat Page 192 The National Wildlife Federation works to instill a love of nature and wildlife in teachers and students across New York City. Our place based education programs foster whole-school sustainability, promote climate resilience, and inspire people to create and conserve habitat. We invite you to discover and celebrate urban pollinators with Growing a Wild NYC: A K-5 Urban Pollinator Curriculum. We dedicate this curriculum to current and future generations of children so they may understand that the planet’s smallest creatures are also the most important. 2 ©NATIONAL WILDLIFE FEDERATION | GROWING A WILD NYC: A K-5 URBAN POLLINATOR CURRICULUM A Message from a National Wildlife Federation Naturalist Without pollinators, life on this planet This Growing a Wild NYC: A K-5 Urban would not exist as we know it. Pollinator Curriculum will help you change By visiting flowering that. The twenty lessons feature place- plants to feed on nectar based projects, games, field guides, and and pollen, the di- data collection activities that will introduce verse group of wildlife students to wild bees, butterflies, flies and collectively known as other pollinators, as well as pollination pollinators fertilize ecology. The curriculum includes field flowers, allowing plants to form seeds and lessons so students will have the oppor- tunity to spend time outdoors and directly to reproduce. These plant species would At the National disappear without their pollinating wildlife observe, compare, and make inferences Wildlife Federation, partners. Over 85 percent of flowering about the pollinators and other wildlife our goal is to help plants rely on wildlife to pollinate them so that depend on the urban habitat. they can produce the seeds that will grow pollinators and into the next generation of plants and This curriculum will help your school other wildlife, but keep their species going. community reach the ultimate goal equally important Beyond ensuring plant communities of creating a Schoolyard Habitat that is to foster curiosity across the planet continue to thrive, will not only provide habitat for urban in children about pollinators but also serve as an out- pollinators are responsible for the forma- the natural world, tion of the seeds, fruits, berries and nuts door classroom to connect the next sharpen observation that plants produce to house their seeds, generation to nature. which in turn feed wildlife across the and scientific inquiry food web. Without pollinators, wild plant At the National Wildlife Federation, our skills and encourage communities would fail, and so would the goal is to help pollinators and other wild- an appreciation and animals that depend on them for food. life, but equally important is to foster cu- understanding of all That includes us humans. If pollinators riosity in children about the natural world, life on our planet— disappeared, so would one-third of our sharpen observation and scientific inquiry food supply. skills and encourage an appreciation and including the urban understanding of all life on our planet—in- environment. Honey bees are the most familiar pollina- cluding the urban environment. Educators tors. Yet the world of pollinating animals are the front line in both reversing the is so much more diverse than that one Nature Deficit problem and creating an domesticated bee species. Did you know environmentally literate citizenry. By em- that there are over 20,000 wild bee species powering and equipping you with the tools on the planet, with around 4,000 native to share the wonders of the natural world bee species found here in North America with your students, we hope to help you alone? Collectively, bees are the most effi- do just that. Nothing less than the future cient and effective pollinators, but wasps, of both wildlife and people is at stake. moths, butterflies, beetles, flies, hum- mingbirds and bats are all pollinators too. David Mizejewski Yet many people are completely unaware Naturalist, of the critically important ecological role National Wildlife Federation these animals play. A MESSAGE FROM A NATIONAL WILDLIFE FDERATION NATURALIST | NWF.ORG 3 Introduction Purpose of the Growing a Wild NYC: parks, gardens, and schoolyards can play A K-5 Urban Pollinator Curriculum a key role in restoring habitat connectivity Did you know that there are over 20,000 for pollinators, thus ensuring greater species of bees worldwide, and more than biodiversity not just in our neighbor- 230 species in New York City alone?1 Bees, hoods, but also the surrounding 5 butterflies and other pollinators play agricultural lands. Cities play an increas- an essential role in our ecosystem. They ing role in protecting biodiversity. enable plant reproduction by pollinating Significantly, several American cities plants through the transfer of pollen from support a higher diversity of native bee 6 flower to flower. One out of every three species than do adjacent rural areas. bites of food that we eat, and over 75% This curriculum was designed to engage This curriculum of all flowering plants, depend on the students in learning about pollinator pollination services of bees. Pollinators was designed to habitats, the connections between are also the foundation of our food web. engage students plants and animals, and our role in For example, a pair of chickadees needs in learning about the environment. It is a placed-based 6,000 to 9,000 caterpillars just to feed one curriculum which allows students to pollinator habitats, the brood of hatchlings.2 learn about biodiversity, ecosystems and connections between Yet pollinators face serious threats due to habitats through direct experience and plants and animals, several human factors, most significantly observation. By extending the classroom and our role in the from the loss and fragmentation of habitat to the city’s parks and gardens, students environment. in growing towns and cities across the learn directly from nature, awakening country. For example, monarch butterfly their senses, thinking, and curiosity. The populations have declined by as much as culmination is the creation of their own 90% in recent decades. Other species have schoolyard pollinator habitat, in which become extinct entirely. It is time for us to they are able to apply all they have pay attention to what biologist E.O Wilson learned to help solve a real problem and called, “the little things that run the world.” contribute to the restoration of habitat connectivity in our urban environment. By the year 2050, there will be a 72% Once the schoolyard habitat is created, increase in the global demand for food the learning only really just begins. It is 3 based on population growth, while by a living laboratory right on the school that time 68% of the world’s population grounds, which will continue to foster 4 will be living in cities. In other words, opportunities for interdisciplinary there will be more demand for food and study. By engaging with nature directly, less habitat available for the insects that students will not only be more engaged pollinate those crops, unless we make a with environmental study, but they will difference. have the opportunity to become lifelong stewards of the environment, which is so With increasing urbanization, our city essential for our times. 1 greatpollinatorproject.org/ 2 Tallamy, Douglas W. Bringing Nature Home: How You Can Sustain Wildlife with Native Plants. Timber Press, 2009. 3 Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 2017. The future of food and agriculture – Trends and challenges. Rome. 4 “News”, United Nations, Dept. of Economic and Social Affairs, 2018, un.org/development/desa/en/news/population/2018-revi- sion-of-world-urbanization-prospects.html Acessed 23 August, 2019. 5 Hall, Damon M. et al. 2016. The City as a Refuge for Insect Pollinators. Conservation Biology. 31, No. 1: 24–29. 6 ibid 4 ©NATIONAL WILDLIFE FEDERATION | GROWING A WILD NYC: A K-5 URBAN POLLINATOR CURRICULUM How to Use the Growing a Wild NYC: This curriculum lends itself well to keep- A K-5 Urban Pollinator Curriculum ing a field journal where students can The curriculum is organized by season, record observations through the seasons.