We continued our tree study this past week. We continued talking about the parts of a tree and did some hands-on exploring to make it more meaningful.
We had a discussion of the things we like about trees. Different children shared their reason for liking trees. As I wrote down their responses, I alternated between writing in green and brown. We've been talking about patterns and this provided an opportunity for many of them to notice that we were making an AB pattern in our data recording.
We had taken paper grocery bags and cut them into vests. Each child was then taken outdoors to do a bark rubbing on a local tree on our playground.
Our next project was to make leaf crowns. We displayed three different colors of leaves and the children chose the leaves they wanted to use to make a pattern.
We used our new cool temp glue gun for the first time and loved the results. It made it possible to safely use the glue gun with the kiddos to ensure the leaves would stay on the construction paper strips, without worrying that the kiddos would get burnt.
After the leaf crowns were completed we moved on to making acorn necklaces. Ms. Myrna and her husband drilled holes in collected acorns and the children got to choose between using large acorns, small acorns, and acorn caps in this patterning activity.
We even did some dramatic performances portraying the life of a tree. In this photo the kiddos were seeds curled up in the soil soaking in the water from the rain.
In this one they were beginning to grow and their branches began reaching out to the sun.
We completed our week by wearing the tree costumes they had worked on during the week: tree bark vest, leaf crown, and acorn necklaces. We did a Tree Parade as we walked around the school campus and answered questions when asked about the tree parts.
It was so much fun and the kiddos got to take the costumes home with them on Friday. We were able to incorporate nature appreciation, science understanding, and math patterning skills along with dramatic play with the one concept of Trees.