McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader, Revised Edition · Lesson XCI · Part 9: Soldiers, birds, seeds and society

97. Transportation and Planting of Seeds (H. D. Thoreau)

Goal: Your child explains, with examples from Thoreau, how wind, squirrels and birds plant forests.

⏱ About 40 minutes · 6 steps

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You'll need

  • The book, open to this lesson
  • A notebook or lined paper and a pencil

What's in the book

A nature essay by Henry David Thoreau: pine seeds have wings that the wind carries; squirrels cut and store pine cones and bury nuts; jays drop acorns. So, Thoreau says, new trees come from seeds carried by wind and animals. Definitions follow.

The lesson, step by step

  1. About the author

    The book says Henry David Thoreau (b. 1817, d. 1862) was born in Concord, Massachusetts, graduated from Harvard in 1837, supported himself by teaching, lecturing, surveying and carpentry, and in 1845 built a small house on the shore of Walden Pond, where he lived about two years. His books include "Walden, or Life in the Woods."

  2. Words and meanings

    The words and meanings are printed at the end of the lesson. Read a few together before the reading, so they don't trip your child up:

    Membrane, a thin, soft tissue of interwoven fibers.

    Deciduous, said of trees whose leaves fall in autumn.

    Germinating, sprouting, beginning to grow.

    Ornithologist, one skilled in the science which treats of birds.

    Your child reads each meaning aloud, then uses the word in a sentence of their own.

  3. Read aloud

    Your child reads the essay aloud, a few paragraphs at a time. It starts with the pine seed:

    In all the pines a very thin membrane, in appearance much like an insect's wing, grows over and around the seed.

    And it ends with the jays:

    These birds alone are capable in a few years' time to replant all the cleared lands.

  4. Talk about it

    SayHow does a pine seed travel? How does an acorn or a nut travel?

    SayThoreau counted the cones one squirrel had stripped in a winter. What does that tell you about how he studied nature?

    SayWhat is Thoreau arguing against when he says pines do not spring up "from nothing"?

  5. Tell it back

    Close the book.

    SayExplain to me three ways seeds get planted, with Thoreau's examples.

    Your child may draw and label a pine seed, a squirrel's store of cones and a jay with an acorn.

  6. Go outside

    If you can, find a pine cone, an acorn or a maple "wing." Look closely. Which way would it travel? Your child writes two sentences of their own observation, the way Thoreau did.

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