Let’s Help the Pollinators!

Now that we’ve learned about how important pollinators are for our environment, let’s take a look at a real-world project that’s helping to protect pollinators and contribute to science. This real-world example is called “The Great Sunflower Project”.

Logo of "The Great Sunflower Project" text around a circle with a illustration of a bee inside. Text on the right in uppercase heading reads The Great Sunflower Project. Body text below reads: The Great Sunflower Project is a  citizen science project. It means that people like you and me can help scientists learn more about pollinators.

Here’s how you can contribute to the Great Sunflower Project at your own school.

  • First, you’ll need a pollinator garden. Perhaps your school already has a pollinator garden, or maybe you could plant one with wildflowers that are native to your area.
  • Then, you’ll want to count how many pollinators visit our garden. We can use the bee counter we are going to build in this course. You should track this information in a log book.
  • Later, we can take pictures of the pollinators and send the data to the Great Sunflower Project!

We learned that pollinators are important helpers that help plants grow and make food. To better understand their impact, we’re going to create a special tool to count how many pollinators are in a certain area. With this tool, we can find out if a place has enough pollinators or if it needs more flowers for them to feed on.

Let’s help the bees by heading over to the next section. Get ready to build!➡