What Trees do you See? Activities to Introduce Trees

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1 Page 1 What Trees do you See? Activities to Introduce Trees The following activities are good ways to teach students to identify different kinds of trees. They do not all need to be completed so use them at your discretion. Activity 1: Steal the Soil Overview: students become more familiar with local tree species Time: 5 minutes of explanation, 15 minutes playing Materials: An object to represent the soil. eg.a piece of paper, ball. Optional: tree name cards and tape. 1. Divide the class into two teams; Coniferous Trees vs. Deciduous Trees. 2. Assign each child the name of a tree. Either have the student remember or give them a card with the tree name on it to tape to their shirt. Coniferous Trees: Hemlock, White pine, Red pine, Jack Pine, Balsam Fir, Douglas Fir, Larch, White cedar, Tamarack, Yew, Black Spruce, Red Spruce Deciduous Trees: Tulip, Sassafras, Red oak, Burr oak, Sugar maple, Silver maple, Red maple, Iron wood, Smooth sumac, Red ash, Black cherry, Black walnut, Honey locust, Sycamore, Dogwood 3. Explain the rules: The object of the game is to grab the soil and bring it back to your original place. The teacher will call out two tree names. When the teacher calls your tree name, you and a player from the other team will go forward to try and get the soil before the opposing student gets it. But be careful! Once you have the soil in your hand, you can be tagged by the other student. If you are tagged when you have the soil, the other team gets a point. If you get the soil back to your team, you get a point. 4. Call out a particular conifer and deciduous tree. 5. Repeat until all students have had a turn.

2 Page 2 Activity 2: Did you know? Scavenger Hunt Overview: Students explore the school yard, following clues to look for fact cards with information about the natural world. In the process, they are exposed to things in the school yard they might normally ignore and learn interesting facts about the local environment. Time: at least 30 minutes Materials: Laminated Nature Fact Cards 1. In advance, hide laminated nature fact cards with facts in the school yard. Make sure each hiding place corresponds to a clue. 2. Bring students out to the school yard and explain any boundaries. Also explain that it s not a race. If your students are too competitive, you may want to have them work in groups or as a whole class to find the cards. 3. Give the clue and let the search begin! Pick a few from the ones below or make your own Tallest tree in the lot: I m the biggest, but am I the best? Birds think so on me they rest. Fence post: I create a safety line, I think you ll all agree that s fine. Can t come in, Can t go out, Security s what I m about. Pine tree: I ve got bark, but not much bite. They call me Jack or Red or White Maple tree: When you see my leaf, you do many things; but usually you stand and sing! Teacher: You see me almost every day; and all year long you do as I say! Very young Tree Sapling: Right now I m young and short you know, but in just a while I will grow! I ll be SO TALL, you ll be the ones who look puny and small! 4. Have the student read the nature fact aloud to the class when they find the card.

3 Page 3 Sample facts for information card: -Did you know that you can eat the berries off mulberry trees in the spring time? Keep an eye out for them next year. -Did you know sumac trees are one of the most common trees in Hamilton? In the fall, it s easy to see them because they turn bright red. Look for them the next time you re on the Linc Expressway or the Did you know the caterpillers of monarch butterflies ONLY eat milk weed plants? If we lost all of our milk weed, we d also loose the monarchs. -Did you know wild cherries grow in Hamilton s conservation areas? Look for them next spring. -Do you know what a mouse s favourite food is? Not cheese Sugar maple seedlings! They love the tender bark of young sugar maples. -Did you know acorns can be eaten by people? First Nations groups used to use them as a valuable food source. Squirrels, deer, rabbits, insects, woodpeckers, mallards, and wood ducks all like to eat them too!.

4 Page 4 Activity 3: Tree Senses Overview: Students will explore a tree using all your senses. Time: 1hour (additional time can be spent in class writing poems or stories) Materials: Eye Spy Telescopes: (Paper Towel Rolls) Paper, pens Procedure 1. Find a large tree to sit around. 2. Discuss the parts of trees; trunk, branches, twig, dip line (the edge of the leaves), leaves, crown, roots, etc. 3. LISTEN: Try having your class lie underneath the tree for a few minutes with eyes closed (depending on group!). Listen for different sounds. Bring the class together and write down words to describe what they heard. Have the students use words later for a poetry or story telling activity. 3. SMELL: Take a deep breath while standing under the tree s crown and compare the smell to that elsewhere in the school yard (the parking lot perhaps). Or smell leaves on the ground and have students describe their smell. Or, in the spring, look for the flowers on the tree and have students describe their smell. 3. Touch: Have students gently examine and touch the tree s bark. Have them think of 5 words to describe it and write them down (you can have students use the words in a poem later, etc). 4. LOOK: Have students lie on their backs with their Eye Spy telescopes. Look at the tree canopy. What do they see? Is there more than one kind of tree? What are the differences? How can you tell them apart? 5. As a class figure out what kind of tree you ve been looking at. The leaves and the bark will be the best clues. 6. Optional: TASTE: Depending on the kind of trees in your school yard, bring in maple syrup, fruits, or nuts that could grow on one of the trees. Let everyone have a taste.

5 Activity 4: Steal the Leaf Page 5 Overview: A variation of Steal the Bacon where students must get the correct leaf sample before the other team. Materials: Leaf samples from the trees in your school yard or from a local wood lot. Or print from the leaf silhouettes handout. 1. Line the students up in two rows 2. Number the students so that there is a 1 in each row, a 2 in each row, etc. 3. Spread the leaf samples out in the space between the rows. 4. Call out a number and a leaf type. 5. The called students race to get the correct sample and bring it back to their line before the other player gets it. If they get it right, they get a point, but, if they pick the wrong sample, they lose a point. 6. If the player from the other team tags them before they get back to their line, they other team gets the point. 7. Repeat until everyone has had a turn

6 Page 6 Activity 5: Learn your Leaves! Overview: Students will learn to identify the trees in your school yard by their leaves Time: -Spend at least one hour before hand learning to identify the trees in your school yard (if you re not already familiar). The following online leaf keys may be helpful. Trees in Canada by John Laird Farrar is a useful book and is available from the Hamilton Public Library. To help get you started: you most likely have Norway maple, Austrian Pine, Manitoba Maple, and Trees of Heaven somewhere on your school property (It seems the school board got a deal on them 50 years ago ) Time: 1 to 2 hours of class time. When: Mid to late fall is the best Materials: Blackboard/chalk or whiteboard/markers. Tree Identification Guide (optional). Identified Leaf Samples (keep in your class room) Background: Many of the trees planted in your school yard will not be native tree species. For example, Norway Maples, Manitoba Maples, and Austrian Pines are commonly planted around Hamilton Schools. However, these trees can be useful for teaching students the basics of identifying maple trees and pine trees. If you want to teach your students to identify local species, look for Sugar Maple, Silver Maple, Red Maple, Black Cherry, Ironwood, Red Oak, White Oak, Beech, or Birch trees, Red Pine, or White Pine in your school yard, local woodlots, or conservation areas. This is just a short list of the more common local trees. See for a more thorough list. You can bring your students to these areas, or else bring previously collected samples to class. (You can also scatter them around the school yard for students to find). If you do collect leaves from a woodlot or conservation area, please do so in the fall and collect leaves from the ground.

7 Page 7 1. Have students (individually, in groups, or as a class) brainstorm the names of trees they think will be found in the local area. 2. Compile the group lists into one master list on the board, so everyone can see. 3. Review the list with the class, highlighting the local tree species. You can choose to teach families (oak trees, maple trees, etc) or species (red maple, silver maple, sugar maple), depending on your time and class ability. 4. Bring students out to the school yard. Give them 10 minutes to collect leaf samples. This activity is best done in the fall when leaves can be collected from the ground, not taken from living trees. Make sure students understand that they are not to take leaves from off the trees. 5. Back in the classroom divide the class into groups of 4. Have the students organize their selection of leaves. They can pick whatever criteria they like to categorize them; size, colour, texture, number of lobes, etc. Give them about 10 minutes to do this. OPTIONAL: Have students display their categorized leaves to the class. Try having a museum showcase where each group sets up an exhibit in the classroom. Everyone walks around the classroom together stopping at each exhibit. There, the group members explain how they organized their leaves in one or two sentences. -After the showcase discuss the categories with the class. Which categories were the most interesting? The most useful? Did anyone find that leaves they knew to be from the same tree wound up in different categories? (For example if organized by size a large oak leaf and a small oak leaf might be put in different categories). 6. Show the leaf samples you collected earlier, explaining what tree each kind came from and the key features of each kind of leaf. For example, Oak trees have acorns and leaves like keys.

8 Page 8 Pine trees have long thin needles and large cones. Cedars have flat needles that look a bit like scales and small cones. Spruces have short needles, like a bristle brush. Maples have broad leaves (like on the flag) and seed keys called samaras. Tulip Trees have leaves of unusual shape. They sort of look like a tulip flower (if you flattened one out). In spring, they have yellow flowers. Mulberry Trees and sassafras tress have leaves that are all different shapes. Some are oval, some are divided into 2 lobes, like a mitten, and some are divided into 3 lobes. Ash Trees have COMPOUND leaves; leaves that are made of more than one piece. Each leaf has 7-9 leaflets all about the same size. Walnut trees also have compound leaves. They have 9 or more leaflets, all different sizes. The leaflets at the beginning and end will be smaller than those in the middle. Willow trees have long and skinny branches that have long, skinny leaves on them. (these are just sample descriptions. Write your own, or have students develop their own) 7. Have students bring their samples forward and match them with your sample, organizing all the leaves into their species type. Go through the samples with the class; pointing out oak, maple, pine, ash, etc. 8. Finally, discuss the list you made at the beginning of the class. What leaves did you find? Did you find any that weren t listed? Where there any trees you expected to find but didn t? Do you have more local trees or more introduced trees? How many kinds of trees are there in your school yard? -Keep the leaf samples for additional activities.

9 Activity 6: Leaf Silhouettes Page 9 Overview: Students will become familiar with the leaves of local tree species by using their silhouettes for artistic activities. Time: 1-2 hours, depending on time and creativity. When: Any time of year Materials: Leaf silhouettes handout Pencils Construction Paper Scissors Glue Crayons, markers, pencil crayons, paint, etc. 1. Print Leaf Silhouettes handout, make enough copies for each student 2. Give the students about 10 minutes to identify the leaves on the sheet. 3. Go over the sheet as a class, talking about each leaf s key features. Try having the class come up with a comparison for each leaf. For example, Oak leaves look like keys. Basswood leaves look like hearts. Tulip leaves look like tulips (obviously!). Pine Needle clusters look like very small brooms, etc. 4. Have students cut out the leaf silhouettes and make collogues. The pine needles and cedar leave will be tricky to cut out; try having students draw their own or use leaves from outside as stencils. Try having students use the leaf shapes to represent other objects. For example, a mulberry leaf can be a mitten, a cedar leaf can be seaweed, willow leaves can be arms and legs while birch leaves can be bodies, etc. You can also have them trace the silhouettes onto construction paper to make more copies of each leaf, or trace the leaves onto the paper and colour them in with interesting patterns.

10 Page 10 Activity 7: Find the Tree Overview: Students match a leaf sample to a tree in the school yard. Time: 1 hour of class time. Optional: Spend at least one hour before hand learning to identify the trees in your school yard (if you re not already familiar). The following online leaf keys may be helpful. Trees in Canada by John Laird Farrar is a useful book and is available from the Hamilton Public Library. To help get you started: you most likely have Norway maple, Austrian Pine, Manitoba Maple, and Trees of Heaven somewhere on your school property (It seems the school board got a deal on them 50 years ago ) When: Mid to late fall is the best Materials: Tree Identification Guide (optional). Samples of leaves in your school yard (at least 1 per student) My Tree! Handout Crayons for rubbings Pencil 1. Before hand, collect leaves from the trees in your school yard. Get enough for one per student. Also prepare enough copies of the My Tree Handout for students. 2. Go through the handout with students and make sure they understand everything and know how to take a rubbing. 3. Bring the class outdoors and give each student a leaf. 4. Have them explore the school yard looking for the tree their leaf came from. 5. When they find the tree, give them the handout and some crayons and a pencil.

11 Activity 8: Ca-tree-gories! Page 11 Overview: Relay race to categorize a collection of leaf samples. Time: 1/2 hour Materials: 2-6 boxes (at least shoebox size) Marker Leaf samples 1. Divide the class into two lines. 2. Place two boxes about 6 meters away, one labeled coniferous trees, one labeled deciduous trees. Variations: 3 boxes labeled compound leaves, broad leaves, and needles 4+ boxes, labeled Oak, Maple, Ash, Walnut, Tulip, etc. 3. Hand the first student in each line a leaf sample. 4. They race to the boxes and place their leaf sample in the correct box, then return to the back of the line. 5. When the runner is SITTING DOWN at the back of the line, the next student gets their sample and goes. 6. When everyone has had a turn and is sitting down, sort out the boxes. Have all the samples been put in the correct box? -There won t be a winning team in this game, as there s no way to know which group put which sample where.