| Links to the story | Key Stage 2 and 3 programmes of study | Possible learning outcomes | Big ideas |
| Cuckoo flowers in the spring | learning new vocabulary, relating it explicitly to known vocabulary and understanding it with the help of context and dictionaries (KS3 English | To appreciate that communities in the past have named their plants with many different local names, that reflect how people thought about the plants | climate change folklore spring stories Geometry and beauty Interdependence |
There are many local names for the cuckoo flower listed in Grigson’s Englishman’s Flora. In Somerset they were called milk maids, because the shape of the petals resembled a milkmaid’s dress.
The Shakespeare song is from Love’s Labours Lost (Act V, Scene II). It is part of one of his most loved poems.
Male orange-tip butterflies emerge in April, a week earlier than the females. They only reproduce once each year and the females lay their eggs underneath the flower of the cuckoo-flower.
After a few days the eggs become orange. After a week, the egg hatches into a green, well-camouflaged caterpillar on the seedpods of the cuckoo-flower. After a month, it turns into a chrysalis, hidden in the grass waiting for next spring so it can become a butterfly.