“I
Love You, Arizona!”
Activity
1 – Sprouting Saguaro Cacti Seeds
1.
Collect a 1/2-egg shell for each of your
students. You can also use
biodegradable planting cups that can be bought at any plant nursery. DO NOT PLANT IN A PLASTIC CUP! With a permanent marker, write
student’s name on the eggshell.
2.
Obtain a bag of planting soil from a
nursery or local grocery store.
Pour this planting soil into a bucket of water so as to make a real
“soupy” mixture. If you and your
kids do not like getting your hands messy, use disposable rubber gloves. Mix the soil/water solution together
until the soil is very saturated with water.
3.
Reach into the bucket and grad a hand-full
of soil. Squeeze the soil to
remove all the excess water.
4.
Place the “squeezed” soil into the 1/2
eggshell until the 1/2 eggshell is full of wet soil.
5.
Sprinkle saguaro seeds onto the soil.
6.
With the pad of your index finger, “pat”
the seed down into the soil. You
will still be able to see the seeds.
7.
Using an egg carton, have students place
the saguaro seeds and eggshells into the carton. Since each egg carton will hold 12 eggs, you will need 2 to
3 egg cartons for your class.
8.
Cover tightly, the entire egg carton with
“clear, saran-wrap”.
9.
Place egg cartons under indirect
light. A window is fine as long as
direct sunlight does not fall upon the cartons.
10. In about 7 – 10 days, you will
begin to see small, green plants sprouting. What you first see are two, seed leafs called cotyledons. The baby saguaro is found where the two
cotyledons join together. The baby
saguaros are about the size of a pinhead and are whitish in color. The two cotyledons will “die off” as
the saguaro begins to grow.
11. Baby saguaros need to be watered
at least once a week. For the
first 2 – 3 months, water the saguaros by misting them; do not pour water on
them.
12. When the saguaros are big enough
to put outside, which may be 6 months to a year, plant the whole egg
shell/biodegradable cup into the ground.
Be sure to plant the your saguaros under a “nurse plant” as direct
Arizona summer sunshine will kill them!
You can get saguaro
seeds…
a.
collect saguaro seeds from saguaro cactus
fruit in June and July.
b. buy
packages of saguaro seeds from nursery of gift shops that sell to
tourists. You will need 4 – 5
packs of saguaro seeds for a classroom of 30 students.
“I
Love You, Arizona!”
Activity 2 – Making String From the Agave Plant
The
Native American people excelled in their ability to live and survive from the
plants and animals found in the natural environment. This activity will give students one experience in using a
plant that was so very important to the early Native Americans.
Agave - The agave plant is a succulent
commonly found in the Sonoran Desert.
There are many varieties of agave and many are used in desert
landscaping. Agaves are sometime
commonly called century plants because of the incorrect idea that they only
bloom once a century. The truth is
that agave does only bloom once and that bloom varies by species from 5 years
of age to 25 years of age. When
they do bloom, they send forth a tall stalk that can raise up to 10 feet into
the air those blossoms into a cluster of beautiful flowers.
The
Native American people used agave for many things. The underground tuber was a source of food and, in some
areas, still worked into the drink tequila. But it is the agave leaves that we are interested in using
for this lesson and they were used to make string, ropes and even sandals.
Making agave string...
1. Warning!!!!!! Most agaves have sharp points and
needles. YOU MUST REMOVE THESE
SHARP POINTS AND NEEDLES BEFORE ALLOWING YOUR STUDENTS TO WORK WITH THE
LEAVES!!!
2. While wearing gloves and with a sharp knife or garden
scissors, cut 1 - 4 agave leaves from the base of the plant. Two leaves will make enough string for
a class of 30 students.
3. Immediately dull the sharp needle found at the end of the
agave leaf by cutting it off 1/2 inch from the end. We want to keep and show our students the needle for
in reality it was used as a needle and threat for sewing by the Native American
people.
4. With your knife, cut off any other sharp hooks, spines, etc.
that you find on the agave leaf.
Since agave is a succulent, it is relatively easy to cut off these sharp
hooks, etc.
5. Wrap your know “safe’ agave leave totally in aluminum
foil. We are going to now bake
this leaf so make sure it is wrapped well with the foil.
6. Place the foil-wrapped agave into you oven for two hours at
325 degrees. Let me assure you
that as the agave bakes, you will smell it! Different varieties of agave have different smells as they
bake. THE AGAVE AND THE ALUMINUM
FOIL WILL BE HOT WHEN YOU REMOVE IT FROM THE OVEN, SO WEAR GLOVES AND BE
CAREFUL!!!
7. Once your agave leaf has cooled, you are now ready to remove
the fleshy parts of the leaf and secure the fibers that act as agave string.
8. Have students lay newspaper on the classroom floor as to not
to create a mess on the classroom carpet!
9. Using river rocks as hammers, have student GENTLY pound the
agave leaf. As they do this, the
plant-matter will be broken away from the leaf fibers. Continual pounding and washing of the
agave leaf in a bucket of water will slowly remove all the plant matter leaving
only the agave fibers/string. To
get all the plant matter off the fibers may take 10 - 20 minutes of pounding
and washing of the leaf.
10. Now that you have the fibers cleaned, you can show the
students how to braid the individual fibers into a strong cord. From this cord, the Native Americans
made ropes, sandals and many useful items that they used in their everyday
living in our Sonoran Desert.
“I
Love You, Arizona!”
Activity 3 – Etching Sea Shells
1.
Have your students draw their design onto their shell with a
pencil. A bold design might be their
initials that look like this…
L B
Any design must have both an outside and an inside
line. A circle would look like
this…
0
2.
With clear fingernail polish, paint the polish between the lines of the
design. What is painted (covered)
with the clear fingernail polish will be protected from the acid in the
vinegar.
3.
Turn the shell over and paint the entire underside of the shell with
the clear fingernail polish. Let
the polish dry hard, usually 5 – 10 minutes.
4.
Into a 12 ounce plastic cocktail cup, pour about 2 inches of white
vinegar. This becomes the acid
that will etch the shell.
5.
When the fingernail polish on the shell is completely dry, place the
shell into the cup of vinegar with the design up.
6.
You will notice that small bubbles immediately begin the rise from the
part of the shell that is not covered with fingernail polish. The etching process has begun.
7.
It will take between 4 – 6 hours to etch the shell into a nice
design. The longer you leave the
shell in the cup of vinegar, the more (deeper) the etching will go into the
unprotected part of the shell.
8.
Do not leave the shell in the vinegar overnight as too much of the
shell will be etched away and the shell will become too brittle.
9.
When the shell is etched to your satisfaction, wash the shell with
water. Washing off the shell with
water will stop the etching process.
10. With fingernail polish remover, remove the clear
fingernail polish from the design and the back of the shell. Your etched shell activity is now
completed.
11. If you want to highlight the
etched design, you can have your students paint their designs with a colored
fingernail polish like red.
12. This activity is a great
activity for Mother’s Day. An
etched shell with your students’ initials or with a heart design will bring tears
to any mother’s eyes.
13. Just make sure that any designed used by your students
is such that they can paint the fingernail polish between a set of lines. The Hohokam could etch fine lines but
they had 300 years of practice to get to be that good!
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