Plant Scientist

Mount Rainier Educational Activities

Are your kids learning from home? Bring Mount Rainier into your “classroom” with these fun, educational activities.

Ages 6-12 | Life Science - Plant Adaptions, Pollinators, Observations | 10-15 minutes Weekly

Visitors from all around the world come to experience wildflower meadows like this one at Paradise. NPS Photo

Plants often provide clues that the seasons are changing. New leaves and flowers grow in the spring, fruits in summer, leaves start to fall in autumn, and deciduous trees are bare in the winter. Phenology is the study of the timing of life cycles of plants and animals, observing when things happen.

Many visitors come to the park to experience the wildflower bloom! Scientists in the park record the date when flowers start to bloom every year to look for patterns. This information helps us figure out if all flowers are blooming at the same time or if they bloom at different times of the year. The timing of the bloom can be important not just for visitors who are hoping to see the flowers, but for pollinators, like bees and flies.

A hover fly eating pollen from an avalanche lily. Hover flies mimic the bold yellow and black stripes of bees to avoid predators, but unlike bees have no stingers. In subalpine meadows, hover flies pollinate more flowers than bees. NPS Photo

If the flowers start to bloom before or after the pollinators arrive, they might miss their opportunity to pollinate the flower. Pollination is when pollen is transferred from on flower to another, so the plants can reproduce. Pollinators like bees, flies, ants, and birds, help carry the pollen from flower to flower.

Learn more about the plants of Mount Rainier and when they are blooming.

Education rangers take students out on field trips in the park, so they can study wildflowers. They make observations and record data. NPS Photo

You can be a plant scientist, too, by keeping track of the changes plants experience as time goes by in your neighborhood. Recording these changes in four easy steps:

• Choose a plant near your home.
• Give your plant a name (we like silly names, but sometimes plant names give people an idea of what they look like. Examples: bluebell, magenta paintbrush.)
• Pick a day each week to visit your plant and visit for a whole year to see how it changes with the seasons.
• Each time you visit draw a picture of your plant in a journal. Make notes about changes that you see (new leaves, buds, flowers or seeds). Were any pollinators around?

Native Plants Junior Ranger

Become a Native Plants Junior Ranger! Discover plants found across the country. Learn about different ecosystems and why it’s important to protect native plants. Explore plants in parks and at home. Check out the activity book!

Where this belongs

• Mount Rainier National Park

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