How Bats Help Desert Cactus Flowers, Read and Answer

Look for bees or butterflies on flowers in a garden or park and watch where they land next. Then read each passage together and check with the answer key.

Read how bats drink nectar from saguaro flowers that open at night and carry pollen on their faces. Pollination is moving pollen from flower to flower. The directions on the page read: Read the passage. Then, turn the page and answer the questions. On page 2: Circle the letter of the best answer for questions 1 to 3, and write the answers to questions 4 and 5 on the lines. The answer key covers the questions on page 2.

Yes, both. We made it for 2nd Grade plants, and the page works the same whether it lands on a kitchen table or a center rotation. At home, most families go through it together and talk the answers out loud, and that talking is where most of the learning happens with pollination. In class it runs well as independent work while you pull a small group. Print one copy or thirty, whichever the day needs.

Pollination means moving pollen from one flower to another, so the plant can make seeds. Bees, butterflies, moths and bats carry pollen on their bodies as they drink nectar, a sweet juice inside flowers (2-LS2-2).

As a bee drinks nectar, pollen sticks to its fuzzy body and rubs off on the next blossom. A pollinated apple blossom can grow into an apple with seeds inside. On a pumpkin vine, the tiny bump under a flower grows into a pumpkin after a bee brings pollen.

Yes. Many moths visit pale white, sweet smelling flowers at night. Bats drink nectar from saguaro cactus flowers, which open at night, and carry the pollen on their faces.

Yes. All 7 sheets have an answer key.