Botany Week 11

Our focus this week was trees.  The objective was to become acquainted with several types of trees on the PEP campus.  Last time, I created an elaborate scavenger hunt, divided the kids into teams, assigned each team something to bring back from 6 different trees, and gave them all maps to find the trees.  Naturally, they had trouble reading the map, recognizing the trees, finding the things I asked for, etc.  So I knew that had to go, but I wanted to do something that would involve the trees.  I knew I needed to simplify things and spoon feed a little.

Nearest tree: Gumbo Limbo.   Distant left: Banana trees, Bald Cypress, Royal Poinciana.  Distant right: Live Oak and Black Olive

I looked online at lots of ideas and found a website where a mom made clue jars for trees in her yard and gave them to her precocious 4 year old.  I thought it might work for us, so I obtained 6 empty bottles, filled them with leaves and sticks and other plant matter from the trees and then filled them with water - because that made the contents very clear and slightly magnified.  I tagged the bottles with the tree names.

I also drew a map of the campus and only drew in the trees that we were going to visit.  Originally, I thought we'd also do a matching game to learn an extra fact about each tree, but scrapped the idea as too much - however I'll get back to that in a minute.  I also made a card for each kid that said to get a leaf, twig, flower, berry, etc. from a certain tree.  And I brought little tags to attach to the leaves, twigs, etc.   Finally, I had each kid take 6 pieces of paper and a peeled crayon and make a bark rubbing on each tree. And I thought a matching game was too much!

So here is how that went down:  We met in class and talked about how trees are beneficial.  I explained our tree hunt, the bottles, the specimen cards, and the bark rubbings.  I had kids peel crayons.  Then they packed everything in their folders and we went out.  The bottles were only useful to a few kids - but they did like the bottles very much - and by the time we were at the last two trees, no one needed them anyway.

As we found each tree, I chose a student to put a leaf shaped post it on the tree to label it.

The bark rubbings were pointless.  None of them look any different from another (although the trees had very different types of bark).

The specimen cards were kind of blah.  Some kids did as they were told, other kids lost theirs, once we got back we didn't have time to tag the leaves, twigs, flowers, berries, etc.

It should come as no surprise, in my class of over-enriched, energy filled 8-10 year-olds, most of them climbed most of the trees.

Banyan Tree

BUT, I think the kids left knowing that there were lots of different types of trees on campus and the names of at least 4 of the 6.  The bottle idea is cute, but better suited for a smaller group.  Given the chance to do it again, I would keep the spirit of the clue bottles, but tweak it somehow and do the match game I mentioned instead of the leaf, twig, etc. collection and bark rubbing.  The book also has a lesson on how to estimate the height of a tree, which I would have included if I'd had time.

Once again, my volunteer commended on how spirited the class is!  I have a half class left to go, we're going to do an art project, I'm not even going to make a lesson plan.  And even though I won't be sad to see the semester come to an end, I'm already thinking of what I might teach next fall.