Marri Nut: our 2027 Teacher Planning Diary cover, and 3 ways to explore it with your class

Meet Corymbia calophylla, the marri on our 2027 Weekly Teacher Planning and Reflection Diary, plus three curriculum-linked classroom ideas for F-6.

Butler Diaries Updated 24 Jul, 2026

Marri Nut native flora colour card for the 2027 Weekly Teacher Planning and Reflection Diary, featuring Corymbia calophylla, the marri tree

Each of our 2027 covers is named after an Australian native plant. The Weekly Teacher Planning and Reflection Diary wears Marri Nut, and here is a little about it, plus three easy ways to explore it with your class.

Meet the Marri

Corymbia calophylla, the marri of south-west Western Australia, produces big creamy blossoms and the largest gumnuts many children will ever hold, known to every WA kid as honky nuts. Black cockatoos depend on them, cracking the woody nuts for the seeds inside.

We chose it for the Teacher Planning Diary because classrooms run on real objects you can pass around, and a honky nut is a whole science unit that fits in your palm.

Marri Nut native flora colour card for the 2027 Weekly Teacher Planning and Reflection Diary, featuring Corymbia calophylla, the marri tree

Bring it into your classroom

Three simple experiences with Australian Curriculum links, pitched for Foundation to Year 6 and easy to differentiate.

1. Seed engineering

Examine gumnuts (any species your region offers) and how they protect and release seeds. Then set the design brief: build a seed carrier that travels the furthest by wind. Test, measure, improve.

Curriculum: Science, Biological sciences and Design Technologies (living things have life cycles; engineering design processes).

2. The cockatoo food web

Research how black cockatoos depend on marri, then map a local food web for your own schoolyard trees. What happens to the web if one tree disappears?

Curriculum: Science, Biological sciences with the Sustainability cross-curriculum priority.

3. Botanical drawing

Slow down for a full observational drawing session: leaves, nuts and blossom in pencil, then watercolour. Compare with the botanical illustrations of Australian flora in old field guides and talk about art as science.

Curriculum: Visual Arts (observational drawing techniques) and Science inquiry skills.

Plan and reflect

Map the unit across your term in the Weekly Teacher Planning and Reflection Diary, and use the reflection prompts to capture what the class actually chased hardest, that is next term's plan writing itself.