State Flower Eggs

~ About the Project ~ Pam Elliott, who hosted Egg-cellent ~ a flat egg exchange about school communities, is back with another Flat Egg Project. This time participants are asked to create flat eggs decorated with their state flowers. These will then be sent to other participating classes across the country. We are on list #1 and will create and send our eggs to 28 classrooms. Check them out below: Mary Beth Croome Bradenton, Floirda Barbara Seppelt Loveland, Ohio Leslie Bacich Mingo Junction, Ohio Alison Abbott Chicago, Illinois Roberta Gray Austinburg, Ohio Patti Williams Oakland, TN Karen Tribble Lyerly, GA E. Carey Leland, NC Debbie Martin Boonsville, Indiana Carol Jacobsen Franklin, WI Deborah Baldwin San Antonio, TX Ada Swanson North Syracuse, NY Melanie Corn Robinson, IL Sandy Scarborough Columbia, SC Susan Nixon Phoenix, AZ Lisa Hehner St. Louis, MO Norma Goddard La Crescenta, CA Kimberly Mussachia Torrance, CA Joan O'Neill Poughkeepsie, NY Karen Martin Livermore, CA Linda Nelson Detroit, MI Karen Wehling Newcastle, OK Margaret Hunter Williamstown, WV Lisa Nye Elmhurst, NY Mary Vevil Houston, TX Lois Traver Richmond, VA Kathy Santoro Fairview, NJ Pam Elliott Windsor, ME We are excited that a few members of our Team Groundhog will be a part of this project, too! ~ Our Work ~ In beginning our work for this project, I found a very helpful site which gives many coloring pages for state flowers ~ KidZone Geography. We will be including a copy of the coloring page for our state flower with each of our eggs. Another very helpful site for state flowers and other state symbols is a page from abcteach. Here when you click on a state flower name you will find a state flower graphic with lines for writing. Learning About Our State Flower The state flower of Massachusetts is the mayflower. The image above, taken from Juelie's State Flower Garden of Gifs, is a bit deceiving as the true mayflower has a pale pink, almost white flower. The mayflower (epigaea regens), also commonly known as ground laurel or trailing arbutus, has ovate hairy leaves and fragrant, delicate, shell pink, waxy five petal blossoms which appear from March to May. It grows in woods, preferring sandy or rocky soil, under or near evergreens. It was adopted as the official flower of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts by the General Court on May 1, 1918. Unfortunately, since 1925 it has been on the endangered list. This explains why most of the children and myself have never seen our state flower! Our state flower was the subject of a poem by John Greenleaf Whittier, entitled appropriately, The Mayflowers. In this poem, Whittier shows the connection of our state flower to the Pilgrims and the vessel that brought them here. To see actual photos of our state flower and other state flowers, see 50states.com State Flower List and click on the flower names. ~ Our Eggs ~ First, to get us in the "beautiful egg" mood, we read Rechenka's Eggs by Patricia Polacco. This book is a classroom tradition at this time of year and we often make our own version of Rechenka's Eggs. There are also a number of other great books with an egg theme found on this Egg-cellent Booklist. Exploring Ukrainian egg design (pysanky) is a great follow-up to our reading of Rechenka's Eggs so as an extension of this project, we invited Sasha's mom to speak with us about this wonderful art form. For our eggs, I gave the children an egg template with our mayflower in the middle. They had to make the mayflower the correct color, but could choose any other pastel colors they wanted for the remainder of the egg, making sure to use symmetry. The children used crayons to color the eggs, then we used crushed pieces of tissue paper in pastel colors to give it a three-dimensional look. Two examples of our eggs by Gino and Melissa The children then chose states to which to send their beautiful eggs, addressed the envelopes, and off our eggs went. We hope the participants enjoy receiving ours as much as we've been enjoying receiving theirs! Our class website, Window to Our World