All About Trees!

Today, the Urban Naturalists learned about plants outside! We learned about some wonderful trees that surrounded our schoolyard. We had to figure out how to identify the trees using clues in its bark, leaves and flowers.

Sketching a Bradford Pear Tree in their notebooks! 

Here, one of our Urban Naturalists attaches a leaf
into his journal to help ID it in future hikes

We then learned about "Tree Cookies" or cross sections of a tree. By looking at tree cookies, we can learn about the history of the environment in which the tree grew up in. Not only do we learn about the age of the tree, but also about whether the tree received enough nutrients and sunlight, if it suffered any trauma due to fire, human impact or insects, and what was going on in the environment in which it lived. All in all, we discussed how trees were truly living things!

Taking some time to examine our tree cookies

We finished up the day by planting some "mystery seeds". Each Urban Naturalist will measure and analyze their plant in hopes to discover what mystery plant they are growing! Each will get to take their plant home at the end of session.