Kids Explore Nature (Tree Hugging Tots): Trees

I was so excited to find out about the new Blog Carnival, Kids Explore Nature (Tree Hugging Tots), while reading Growing and Learning By Leaps and Bounds blog one day. For those of you who read our blog already you know that Nature Study is a large part of our homeschool. So this should be fun to participate in.

This weeks theme was Trees. We actually just spent 2 weeks on our Deciduous Trees Unit, so I had a very hard time deciding what to post about. I figured I could recap some of what we have already done, as well as add the tree fun we just had.

One of the very first things our family looks for when doing nature study is a good identification guide or website. A good family identification guide for trees is, Fandex Family Guides: Trees. It is easy to take on a nature walk or use at home to further learn about all your nature treasures. Plus it has great pictures, especially of leaves to use for specific identification.

Some favs from our Deciduous Trees Unit were:

Observing bark with a magnifying glass and filling out a notebooking page about what we saw.

Adding to our very cool foam tree as we learned about each tree part.

Taking a Leaf Walk

And Making Leaf Rubbings

To see more detailed info about what we did during our Deciduous Trees Unit click here and here.

Okay, now for the new stuff:

We found a really cool website called, Terrific Trees: Travels With Pierre. Pierre is an acorn who teaches kids all about trees. It has great info that is on a child's level. But, I actually learned quite a lot as well.

We also did a Fall Tree Scavenger Hunt.

Speckled Leaf (from our tree Maple)

Seeds (a sign of Fall)

Leaves With Holes

Fruit (we found apples)

Berries (another sign of Fall)

Leaves Changing Colors

And of course we read LOTS of wonderful tree books. Two of our favorites were, "God's Oak Tree" by Allia Zobel Nolan and "A Grand Old Tree" by Mary Newell Depalma. Susanna, from My Family My Forever recommended "A Grand Old Tree."

There is so much more we would love to learn about the beautiful trees God has made. So we will definitely do more tree nature study in the future. For now we will enjoy the Fall weather, watch the trees dazzle us with their colors, and listen to the music they make as they flutter in the Fall breeze.

I hope your week with trees was as much a blessing to you and your kiddos as it was to us. Head on over to Kids Explore Nature (Tree Hugging Tots) to see what others did this week.