Family Curriculum
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Family Curriculum How to use this activity booklet: This booklet is for families to use while engaging in the Letters to Trees Program. Each activity can be done at home, inside or in any nearby outdoor space. Each project listed can be done individually or in any order, at your own discretion. ACTIVITIES Anatomy of a Tree How Big Can a Tree Get? Tree Canopy Cover Tree Tracker & Observations Writing Your Letter P.O. Box 1995 • Vancouver, WA 98668-1995 • 360-487-8000 • TTY: 360-487-8602 • www.cityofvancouver.us Tree Anatomy This indoor activity is good for kids in third grade age group and beyond. In it you will explore the different parts of a tree and what these parts do!. Materials Anatomy of a Tree” worksheet Writing utensils Coloring utensils (optional) Activity 1. Ask your child: what is a tree? “A tree is a tall plant that is typically defined by a single stem or trunk and which has lateral branches some distance from the ground.” 2. Now fill out Anatomy of a Tree worksheet (attached). Feel free to color it. What is the job of each part of the tree? a. Trunk – trees generally have just one trunk, called a leader. Trunks are thick and strong, but they are also flexible. Food and water travel through the trunk between the roots and leaves. The trunk has multiple layers: 1. The bark is the outside layer (see more about this below). 2. Under the bark you find the phloem, which is the inner bark and transports the nutrients through the tree. 3. Next comes the cambium, which is the layer that helps the tree grow every year. 4. Fourth is the xylem, also called sapwood, which transports water through the tree. 5. Finally, you have the heartwood, which is actually dead wood that provides structure to the tree. This might seem complicated, so it might help to check out a diagram online or the Treeducation Station page for videos covering this in more depth. b. Leaves – leaves take in sunlight and carbon dioxide, and in return give us oxygen. This is called what? Photosynthesis! Leaves also change color in the fall, from green to reds, yellows, and oranges. In spring and summer, leaves are green due to a pigment (chemical color) called chlorophyll, that takes in light. When there becomes less sun and colder air in fall, the plant stops making chlorophyll (and therefore food) and reveals the other colors, before the leaves die and fall off. Do all leaves look the same? Nope. Some leaves are large, some are small, some are tight little needles, and some are soft with lots of lopes or points. P.O. Box 1995 • Vancouver, WA 98668-1995 • 360-487-8000 • TTY: 360-487-8602 • www.cityofvancouver.us c. Fruit – do all trees have fruit? No, but most of the flowering ones do, like apple trees! Is all fruit edible for us? Also no, but some fruit that we can’t eat other animals can, like birds or deer. d. Bark – the bark is the outer layer of the tree, and covers all the woody spots. The bark protects the tree from insects and other pests, and keeps the tree insulated. If you were to peel off the bark from a tree, that would kill the tree. Did you know that if you peel off even a small section, the tree might not be able to heal and it could die? If we get a cut on our skin, we heal, but trees don’t heal, they seal over wounds instead. What does that mean? Trees grow by producing individual layers of wood every year, very different from how animals grow (producing many cells that divide and work together). When a tree has an open wound, it can’t replace the wood that it lost, so instead continues to grow more layers that eventually work to cover the wound. But this can take a long time and may not be able to grow over a very large area. For more information about this, read How a Tree Grows. e. Roots – the roots are one of the most important parts of the tree, and they work very hard even if we can’t see them. Roots typically only grow about 18 inches down in the soil, so they actually don’t grow very deep. Why? Because one of the purposes of the roots is to take in water and nutrients from the soil, like nitrogen. Could we find these things if we go super far down in the ground? No, because these nutrients are usually concentrated in the top layers of soil where most other organisms live. This means that the roots don’t need to grow very deep to get the nutrients they need. Roots also allow the tree to connect with other trees and share nutrients. This can mean that if you cut a tree down, the stump might still be able to survive, because the other trees connecting roots with it will share their nutrients! Finally, roots keep the tree stable in the ground, allowing it to stay strongly in place during heavy winds. For more information about root systems, you can watch the video How Trees Talk to Each Other 3. Now take the backside of your original drawing of a tree and time yourself again for 5 or 10 seconds to draw a tree. Compare your drawing now to what you drew before. Is there anything you left out or added this time? 4. When you’ve completed the anatomy, consider doing an art project – draw or paint your own tree, making sure to include all the parts of a tree. What do your leaves look like on your tree? Are there any animals that are living in or around your tree? Did you include the roots? Be creative! Find the Tree Anatomy Worksheet on the following page. P.O. Box 1995 • Vancouver, WA 98668-1995 • 360-487-8000 • TTY: 360-487-8602 • www.cityofvancouver.us Anatomy of a Tree Read the descriptions below and then match them to the words. Roots Sometimes found in fruit, travels to make more trees Trunk Processes food for the tree Bark Main support of the tree Branches Extract food and water from soil, hold tree in place Twigs Slim woody shoots that grow from branches and hold leaves Leaves Protective outer layer Seeds Woody parts of tree that grow from the trunk Write the correct word in each box to label the parts of the tree. P.O. Box 1995 • Vancouver, WA 98668-1995 • 360-487-8000 • TTY: 360-487-8602 • www.cityofvancouver.us How Big Can a Tree Get? This outdoor activity involves learning sizes, how to measure things, and allows you and your child to explore some of the tallest things in the world! This is good for kids in third grade and beyond. Materials Concrete space – at least 30 feet (ex. Driveway, sidewalk, parking lot) Chalk Tape measurer Activity 1. Trees can grow very tall, and they can also grow very wide, some trees bigger than others. Do you know what the tallest tree in the world is? A redwood, called Sequoia sempervirens. Have you ever seen one? Look at pictures of the redwood trees online. This tree species can grow over 300 feet tall. a. Did you know the tallest tree in the world is names Hyperion, and it is 379.7 feet tall? This tree is found in California, but its exact location is kept a secret so people don’t visit and disturb the tree. By “disturb” we mean climbing on it, touching the bark, taking pine cones, or stomping on the soil around the tree and therefore disturbing the roots. 2. Okay, so we know that the tallest tree species in the world is over 300 feet tall. But what does that mean? We are going to explore heights of trees, and compare these heights to things we are familiar with. You will want to do this outside, on a space with over 25 feet of cement (so a driveway, parking lot, or the sidewalk). So grab your chalk and either a ruler or (ideally) a measuring tape), and head on outside! 3. To truly get the size of a tree, you want to know what that is compared to other things we know. Now, we can’t exactly draw everything to scale, as that would be too difficult. So instead, we are going to convert everything from feet into inches. For example, you are first going to use the chalk to draw yourself. If you are 4 feet tall, you are going to draw yourself on the ground as 4 inches tall. Feel free to add color! Make sure that you leave enough room for everything else that you will draw. 4. Now let’s draw a semi-truck, because those can get pretty big! Semis can be 13.5 feet tall. Draw one 13.5 inches tall next to you. 5. Next you are going to draw a Douglas fir tree. Do you know what a Douglas fir tree looks like? Look it up online, and then look around where you are working. P.O. Box 1995 • Vancouver, WA 98668-1995 • 360-487-8000 • TTY: 360-487-8602 • www.cityofvancouver.us5 Odds are, you can see a Douglas fir tree close by, or at least the tops of some farther away. These are big fir trees that provide great habitat to wildlife in the city, and they are very beautiful. When you know what a Douglas fir tree looks like, draw one standing next to you.