Monday, October 5, 2015

Watching a Tree Change

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We have a wonderful forest behind our school, it’s not school property but it has lots of easy trails to follow.  Since school started we have ventured out to the forest on Fridays. 
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We’ve been learning what we can do and see in this forest.  The children are given lots of opportunities to use their bodies and take risks.
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We’ve listen to the sounds and spotted little creatures, like this slug sliding across our trail.
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Our first walk in the forest our focus was to pick a tree that we could watch change throughout this school year.
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We picked a maple tree, a large leaf maple.  I tied a green ribbon on it so we can find it each week.
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Last Friday we used the school’s nature backpacks with a mission to find leaves from our tree and make rubbings.
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All the leaves on the ground were a yellowish-brown.  We wondered if they would work or would they crumble while we tried to rub?
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Once they each had a leaf they took off their packs, first took out a sit-upon then their clipboard and paper.
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They choose a couple of different colour of crayons and began their rubbing.
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The dried leaves worked fine.  We could see the different parts of the leaves, the ribs and the veins.
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We then packed up and headed back to school.  Next Friday we will be joined by a Science & Nature teacher and lead us through the forest using our animal senses.