Trees Please!

We are studying about trees this week.  The reason we are doing trees this week is that last week we focused on ecology all week because of Earth Day and therefore we thought we would move on to Arbor Day which was actually last week also but we are doing this week.  Confused? Me too!

Anyhow, I thought I would share a little bit about what we have done so far.  Yesterday I pulled out a toy we have had for quite some time but we rarely use.  That's one of the reasons I think I like workboxes.  They inspire me to dig through all the resources I would otherwise forget about.  I pulled out our long lost little apple tree yesterday though and my son really enjoyed putting it together (as he worked on his fine motor skills) and using his plastic animals to tell great stories.  Here are some pictures:

Yesterday we also did part of the tree section out of Contenders for the Faith and learned how to tell the difference between decidous and coniferous trees.  Then in the last box of the day I put some baggies to collect leaves and a camera to take pictures of the  trees we collected them from.  We then went on a walk and collected our tree samples.  So today I put the leaves, pictures, and the Peterson Field Guide to Eastern Trees in a box so that he could identify the trees and make a poster to display his results.  Here are some pictures:

Tomorrow we will doing tree bark rubbings and learning about counting tree rings.  We are enjoying it.  I always was a bit of a tree hugger!