Plant A Tree
Let
your children assist you in planting a tree on the
playground or near your classroom. Get permission first!
Get
donations from parents and buy a tree and plant it in your classes name,
have everyone present and each participate in digging the hole or watering
it. Do this each year and you will soon have a forest of your own!
~or~
Find an area
filled with seedlings. Get permission for the children
to dig up some of them for this activity. Explain to the children
that
we need trees to clean our air. The trees take in the carbon dioxide
we breathe out and they produce the oxygen that we breathe in. Then
take the children to the place that has the tree seedlings. Give
them
each a tin can. Ask them to find a seedling that they would like to
take home and plant. Let them use spades to carefully dig up their
seedlings and put them in their tin cans. The seedlings will take a
long
time to grow, but someday they will be tall trees that take in lots of
oxygen.
Tiny Trees
So you
want to climb a tree -
and need one that's very small,
find a twig to plant in clay
'cause it wont grow at all!
Put some glue in the bottom of an egg carton. Put clay on top of glue.
then let glue dry. Stick twigs into the clay/play dough.
You can add leaves that are cut out of construction paper.
You can pull apart cotton balls and place over twig for snow.
Special Visitor
Arrange for a forester to stop by for a visit.
"Tree"-mendous
Arbor Day
By planting
and caring for trees we insure our own survival and our future.
Julius Sterling Morton helped establish a holiday to remind us to plant
and care for our trees. He started the first official Arbor Day in
Nebraska
on April 10, 1872. The movement grew, and Arbor Day became
a legal holiday in many other states.
Trees clean
the air, return water moisture to the atmosphere,
provide food and materials for much of the world.
Arbor Day is
a time to plant, study, and appreciate
the beauty and usefulness of the trees.
Adopt a Tree
(I)
Adopt
a tree and observe throughout the year. Remember to take photos and
write class stories about it. Measure it's width and guess it's height
(unless your
class is a lot older and can figure it out by arithmetic) Maybe you could
find
an older class to measure it this way and then you can see how well you
estimated its height. Take rubbings of its bark, draw pictures of it and
hug it.
Adopt a Tree
(II)
When
doing a Unit on Trees have your class go outside and adopt a tree.
Then you can take walks to the tree and do activities with the tree.
Some activities include:
Measuring how many children (with hands joined) it takes to go around the
tree.
Talk about what animals could live in the tree
Draw pictures of the trees
Take pictures of the tree (monthly) so the children can see the tree
change over time
In conjunction with the book A Tree Can Be,
talk about what a tree can be to your students.
Talk into a tape recorder and describe what the tree looks like in a
particular season.
Observe animals that live in or near the tree.
Pick up litter around the tree.
Play circle games, such as Rind Around the Rosie
or Duck, Duck, Goose, around the tree.
Tree Booklet
Page 1- write name on
line; add three fingerprint eggs in the nest
Page 2- make red fingerprints on tree for apples. Count apples.
Page 3- make two fingerprints in a “v” shape in hole in trunk of
tree.
When dry add
facial features to make a squirrel.
Page 4- use finger to paint a brown trunk atop the pile of dirt.
Use
green paint to finger paint some leaves on the tree. |
*On this
project I wound up using only one tree and
having the children do all of the steps to the one tree.
Recycling
This
is a great theme to teach about the importance of recycling -
it seems that there is a recipe somewhere out there that teaches
how to take used newspaper and turn it into regular paper - but even
if you didn't do that you could take the art project from that day and
learn some origami or something along those lines just
so that everything was used more than once.
Botanical
Garden
Visit a
botanical garden. Let them pickup parts of the tree off the
ground to take back to do art projects with or to put in a sensory box.
Leaf-Word
Matching
Collect five
samples of different kinds of leaves. Mount each leaf on a piece
of lightweight cardboard, print its name on the cardboard and cover the
entire piece with clear self-stick paper. Make five corresponding word
cards
by printing the name of each leaf on a separate card and covering it with
clear self-stick paper. Have the children match the word cards with the
corresponding leaf-and-word cards.
~ Links ~
National Arbor Day Foundation
The Treetures
Arbor Day Theme ideas from Step By Step Child Care
Arbor Day Crafts at Enchanted Learning
Tree Shape Printable at ABC Teach
Tree Clipart at ClipsAhoy
Arbor Day Ideas at Childfun
Arbor Day Arts & Crafts at First-School
Arbor Day Ideas at Perpetual Preschool
All About Arbor Day at Kids Domain
The Teachers Guide: Arbor Day Thematic
Activities
Arbor Day Dates by State
Teaching Youth About Trees
Arbor Day at A to Z Teacher Stuff
Trees Unit at ABC Teach
Arbor Day Theme at Everything Preschool