Tremendous Trees!

We have been reading a wonderful book called The Tremendous Tree Book by Barbara Brenner & May Garelick. This book celebrates how marvelous trees are and it presents basic facts about trees, how they grow, and how much they benefit our world. We went on a leaf walk this morning to gather leaves from trees near our house. When we returned home we matched the leaves to a leaf matching page in our book to identify what type of tree the leaves came from. Grace made hammered leaf prints from several of the leaves we collected on our leaf walk. She placed leaves in between two sheets of paper and used a hammer to make the leaf prints appear on the paper! While Grace was making her leaf prints I set up a bin filled with water for Jack to explore. I placed several of the leaves we gathered from our walk into the bin. Jack had a great time splashing the leaf water, touching the wet leaves, and making the leaves sink and float using his hands.

We made a leaf poster from the four most common types of trees near our home - oak, maple, birch, and pine (pine needles are actually leaves). Grace is able to identify these four types trees simply by looking at the shape of their leaves!