This week’s Outdoor Hour Challenge is the Seasonal Tree study. We watched the YouTube Videos that Barb posted on the Handbook of Nature page for the Tree Study. I was really excited to see how she draws the leaf. I think I try to get too much detail on the rough sketch. Her video of how she draws the leaf is on her page. I also enjoyed the video about the stages the leaf goes through to change colors before falling off the tree. I had never seen nor heard it explained this way. Amazing process! I love learning something new every day! We spent time this week drawing leaves, and today we drew to the detail. Our new word is Petiole instead of the leaf stalk, and Mid Rib for the main vein. The Handbook of Nature Study Book talked about the terms that a 4th grader should know so we wrote these out for Jon to pay attention to. Except for Head and Foliage, he knew them all, and now knows those two words also. The Bole was our word of the day last summer – and they love knowing what to call the main growing trunk leader.
I was fascinated to hear that they didn’t have a clue about the sap. We cut a branch that I cut on Friday, and then a branch that they cut today. We filleted them both. The moisture was gone from the 4 day old branch. They felt the slime and moisture from the branch 1 hour old. They got the idea of a straw that distributes the moisture to the leaves. They understood in Human Body terms what the veins are, how the skin heals, how it prepares the leaf to fall. I loved hearing them talk all of this threw with the ah-ha voices of boys who had never thought about this before. I love being their teacher!
Our study into the leaves only brought more questions – or areas to understand more deeply. The Chlorophyl. The Keratin for color. The Sap of Maple vs Alder vs Pine. How the Sap heals the bark. If we can slice a piece thin enough to see under a microscope. Questions. Curiosity. And to think, I started this study with the thought that we had “out done” the leaf studies though the years. 🙂 The boys did, of course, enjoy chopping slicing and dicing the limbs to tiny little fragments on the kitchen table. 🙂
Come join us at the Outdoor Hour Challenge! http://handbookofnaturestudy.blogspot.com/2010/10/autumn-2010-ohc-5-seasonal-tree.html
+Angie Wright
