Laura Ingalls Wilder

The Little House books contain several references to wild flowers. In On the Banks of Plum Creek, Laura Ingalls Wilder described the blue flags, black-eyed Susans, violets, and buttercups that grew wild on the family's farm. In By the Shores of Silver Lake, Laura finds her little sister, Grace, sitting in a buffalo wallow surrounded by violets. Laura and Almanzo's daughter, Rose, was named for the wild rose that grew everywhere on the prairie.

The garden shown below contains many wild flowers. How many different kinds of flowers can you identify? Some to look for are black-eyed Susans, purple coneflowers, daisies, cosmos, Queen Anne's lace, gaillardia, bee balm, coreopsis and asters.

Here is a fun activity for students is to select a prairie flower, briefly research it, and create a colorful seed packet for it.

The seed packet template is designed for a description of the wildflower (from the research) to be written on the back and labeled / illustrated on the front. It can then be cut, folded and glued to create the seed packet.

Before gluing the top flap closed, a pinch of wildflower " mystery" seeds can be inserted for students to take home and plant.

Suggested wildflowers are:

anemone blazing star blue violet coreopsis goldenrod gray-headed coneflower lily morning glory prairie sunflower purple coneflower sheep sorrel shooting star thimbleweed yellow violet wild onion wild rose

Wildflower Seed Packet template, view or download pdf
The sample pages can be viewed either in your browser with Adobe's Acrobat plug-in, or downloaded and viewed with Adobe's Acrobat Reader. If you do not have Adobe Acrobat, you can get both the plug-in and the viewer by following this link.