Kid Stuff
Nurturing Nature
By: Carol Suits
Liberty Wildlife Volunteer
Kids are superheroes when they help nature. Be a superhero and find lots of ideas to make your yard more wildlife-friendly!
This month the Superhero Club will be working on growing a pollinator guarden that will feed nectar to pollinators and produce seeds for new plants. It can be as little as a pot of flowers or a part of your yard or your school yard.
Can you name some of the pollinators we can help by growing a pollinator garden?
HINT: 5 of them begin with the letter B!
Find the answers at the end of Kid Stuff
- Create a pollinator garden in a pot or spot in your yard. *
- Find out and draw or list which plants are pollinator friendly. *
- Draw or list pollinators you see in your nature journal*
- Take photos of the pollinators visiting your yard (can also make a slideshow to share)
- Make a short informative video about pollinators and how they help the environment and share it with family, friends, and the Superhero Club
- Make pollinator posters to put up in school and bring one to the next Superhero Club meeting. *
*Indicates activities that earn Superhero Points. The water and shelter habitat activities suggested below were taken from the September issue of Kid Stuff/Nature News. Other activities in that issue may be substituted to earn points.
Superheroes earning points will be recognized with award certificates, featured in a future issue of Kid Stuff, and will display their work at Liberty Wildlife. Please encourage documentation and sharing with the club to earn points.
Meet one of the pollinators
Wonder!
Hummingbirds like Wonder find food in flowers and help pollinate plants at the same time to grow new plants.
https://kidsgardening.org/resources/pollinator-pals/ Meet some cool pollinator critters here.
https://kidsgardening.org/resources/garden-activities-plant-a-butterfly-garden/
https://kidsgardening.org/resources/gardening-basics-grow-milkweed-to-help-monarch-butterflies/
This is a queen caterpillar on a milkweed plant in my pollinator garden. It grew here and ate the leaves of this plant. Now, it’s not eating which is OK. It is beginning to grow its chrysalis so it can become a queen butterfly.
Monarch butterflies need milkweed plants to lay their eggs and grow their caterpillars.
“Unfortunately, monarch butterflies are in trouble. Over the past twenty years, monarch populations have declined by over 90%. The biggest threat to the monarchs is loss of habitat.”
Superheroes can help the monarch butterfly by providing a great habitat!
Your pollinator garden area will provide food and other important habitat needs.
Habitat Need – Water *
Make a Puddle Patch for butterflies
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsZYMH5xRTA
Habitat Need – Shelter *
Make a bee house for solitary bees.
https://tinyurl.com/Solitary-bees-and-houses
https://tinyurl.com/Bee-House-Supplies
Parents: This is an older BirdSleuth edition of the Lab’s ongoing education series for kids. You’ll find good habitat information and activities.
BirdSleuth Explorer’s Guidebook_refuges.pdf * From Cornell Lab of Ornithology K-12 Education
Puzzles!
https://www.jigsawplanet.com/?rc=play&pid=022ebf4f8a45
https://www.jigsawplanet.com/?rc=play&pid=1fdbb9c1e7c8
https://www.jigsawplanet.com/?rc=play&pid=1f3b98edf73e
The 5 B’s Pollinator answers
Birds, Bees, Bugs, Bats, Butterflies! Can you think of any more pollinators?
Previously published in October 2022.
Meet Another Education Ambassador!
By Claudia Kirscher
Liberty Wildlife Volunteer
Sounds of Spring
By Gail Cochrane
Liberty Wildlife Volunteer
Springtime! Time to tune up our ears and tune into native wildlife. I love waking to the sound of Sir Quail outside my 
window, declaring his territory. His piercing WHY! call rings out again and again. Mourning doves flute their soft replies.
Breaking the stillness of night, coyotes yip together, celebrating a kill, or locating a friend. Early, early morning, the mystical hooting of a nearby owl resonates in my ears, in my heart. Later, when I’m out walking, mockingbirds sing intricate lyrics, while house finches twitter among their flocks.
A rustling on the ground alerts me to spiny lizards chasing after each other, or it might be a svelte whiptail stalking tasty insects. If a rattlesnake were nearby, I hope she would let me know to stay clear with a warning rattle. Even a chuckwalla scrambling across a rock face creates noticeable scratching noises.
When the blooms burst open on the ironwood and Palo Verde trees, the desert air shivers with the hum of millions of bees. Crickets chirp and chirp, maybe one has come inside the garage. Later, as we approach the monsoon, cicadas will rasp their insistent buzz.
Tuning into the sounds around us opens our minds and our hearts to greater appreciation of the wildlife that shares our world. Often, we allow communications among our fellow species to fade beneath our notice, but listening is an easy, rewarding habit to build. What else might we try as we build connections with the natural world? Touch? Smell?