So Many Trees!

During the month of September, we went for a nature walk exploring the environment around the school.  The students were given a few baskets to carry with them in case they saw interesting things that they wanted to bring back to class for further discussion.  The group ended up collecting a variety of natural artifacts such as sticks, pebbles, pine cones and a variety of leaves. 

 

 

Once back in the classroom, the group was eager to rummage through and analyze their different findings.  The students seemed to be very intrigued by the leaves, and started sorting them by a variety of attributes such as colour, shape, size and type.  This lead to further discussions and wonderings that generated many thought provoking questions and ponderings. 

 

”My leaf is pointy and red with orange, it’s a Maple Leaf!  Yours is not so pointy and it’s all yellow”.  Julia

“Why are leaves different colours?  Some are the same but so many are different?  Crystal

In reading a variety of books about leaves, we became pretty good at identifying the various leaves we had.  But there were still some that we didn’t know.  Once again, we had a group discussion about why leaves are so different? 

“Maybe because they come from different trees?” Kai

Once the topic of trees came up in the discussion, we decided to share our knowledge about what we knew about trees and what we still wondered about.

“Trees give us air” Shiya

“We get apples and food from trees” Anthia

“They have colourful leaves that fall” Crystal

“What holds the tree up?” Carys

“Why are the leaves falling?” Justin

With so many trees in the school yard, we decided to take a closer look at them by using our five senses and drawing things we thought were interesting.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The students were so fascinated with the trees that they decided to adopt two of them to observe throughout the year.  One was a Linden tree they named “Nicole” and the other was a Pine tree they named “Zayn”. 

 

“No leaves on the Linden tree because it’s cold”  Zoe

“There’s no leaves because the Linden tree is sleeping”  Julia

“The Linden tree leaves fall because winter is coming”  Justin

 

 

“When the pine tree has no smell, it’s sleeping”  Kai

“The Pine tree looks the same as the last time”  Eliad

 

 

“The pine needles on the ground were yellow because they’re old.”  Anjali

 

 

“The Pine tree had green on the bark because it changed colour”  Samuel

“The Linden tree has grass on the bark.”  Crystal

“I saw roots all around the Linden tree.  Some roots were moving in the night.”  Shiya

 

 

 “It took three people to hug all around the Linden tree and the Pine tree trunk”  Anthia

 

The students’ interest in trees continued to foster discussions about changes that they observed happening as the weather and seasons changed and how it affected each tree differently.  Through their own investigations and inquiry, they were able to hypothesize about various things, such as, why leaves change colour and fall while pine tree needles did not, and what happens to trees during the winter?

“The trees went through a pattern!” Julia

“What do you mean by that Julia?” Ms. Huffman

“The seasons are a pattern!  They keep repeating and coming over again!  Julia