Nature Study:One Year Pond Study: Week 3 - Spring Tree Study

It was wet and overcast this week at the pond. The rain was coming down quite heavily.

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Week Two

My mum once again accompanied us to the pond, a fact I was very grateful for as pond study doesn’t seem to be holding the little ones’ attention. Imagine that. This week we decided to familiarise ourselves with our chosen tree. Here were our goals:

Take a photo of the tree
Do a bark rubbing for our nature journal
Measure the circumference and height of the tree and make a note of them at the back of our journal
Identify any plant in symbiosis with the tree
Attempt to identify the tree

First though, here are some photos of the wildlife seen last Monday:

We saw Mallard ducks... — We saw Mallard ducks…

And for the first time this year a pair of Canada Geese

This week we weren’t there for the wildlife alone. We wanted to know what tree we had decided to study:

I still didn’t have the foggiest clue. We began with a bark rubbing:

The children doing a rather wet bark rubbing

We used two sheets of paper placed together, one to go directly on the wet bark, the other over the top to rub with a brown crayon. The rubbings made a beautiful authentic green rubbing (from the actual bark) on the sheet of paper underneith. This will be the one we will use in our journal (the one on the left in the picture) — We used two sheets of paper placed together, one to go directly on the wet bark, the other over the top to rub with a brown crayon. The rubbings made a beautiful authentic green rubbing (from the actual bark) on the sheet of paper underneath. This will be the one we will use in our journal (the one on the left in the picture)

Next up was measuring the circumference, which T11 did using a piece of string. Our plan is to remeasure at the end of the year and see if it has changed much. I had also researched how to work out the height of the tree using this website

I’m thinking the people of our village were wondering exactly what was going on!

T11 seeing if it would work looking through someone elses legs!!

Next we looked at the plant life growing on the tree and we found lichen and Ivy:

We brought home some to see if it would dry enough for our journal

And also a twig which has the Lichin growing on it — And also a twig which has the lichen growing on it

It was interesting that the children straight away said that the presence of lichen meant that the air quality was good and pollution was low. Thank you Apologia Plant Biology! I kinda wished we’d noticed last week when we were studying pollution! When we come back to pollution we will take a look at the Lichen underneath the microscope

And finally I wanted us to try to figure out exactly what tree we were studying. The bark rubbings were a start and I also asked the children to scout around and pick up any leaves which had fallen under the tree. These were the three types we collected:

Whilst doing some research I had happened upon this website which had a lovely downloadable key to identifying trees in the winter by their buds. Oh, was I happy! Help at last! So back we went to the tree, with Gary in tow. Gary works in the horticultural industry so was immediately able to identify it (irritating, no?) but I was thankful he kept it to himself until the children had tried by themselves using the id guide:

The children pulling down brances to look at the tree's buds — The children pulling down branches to look at the tree’s buds

Gary managed to take a lovely photo of the buds. Recognise them anyone?

Black buds which belong to an………Ash tree! So there you have it. This year our tree study will be all about the Ash by the pond side! Next week we will be concentrating on the fauna and flora of the pond area, and I’m really looking forward to it.

I am taking a blogging break until the Tuesday after Easter, apart from posting next weeks pond study, when I will reveal our very first journal page, on Thursday. I hope everyone has a wonderful Easter break.

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