ENWC Winter tree study

Today we revisited our tree, Euonymus alatus, in its Winter season. 

We clipped off a twig to look at more closely and examined the position of the buds and side shoots along its length. We brought it inside to see if we can force the buds to open early.

 

The buds are small and brown with a slightly larger terminal bud and smaller axillary buds arranged in opposite pairs.

Autumn crafts

I love all the Autumn colours.

We made a bowl with some of the leaves we collected

Amy chose some autumnal flowers and made a vase with a pumpkin

We made a sticky picture at the beginning of Autumn and had a go at symmetry with more autumn leaves.

ENWC Oct Autumn Trees study

 After having a walk down into the local woods the children all decided to choose a tree from the garden to study over the next year. Ben and Amy both decided on this one in the front border- Euonymus Alatus - its bright colours attracted them I think!

 Luke decided to look at the plum tree in the back garden.


Here are the notebook pages the children made:

I love our tree studies - never noticed the little fruit on this plant before

Summer Acer study

Today we had a look at the leaves on our Acers in the garden.

Here are all our trees in July

We found out that the leaves are compound leaves i.e. they are comprised of a number of leaflets in a palmate arrangement. The leaflets all had toothed edges but were smooth in texture. The colours of the leaves varied considerably and Ben wrote a lovely description of his on his notebook page.

Winter Tree study

We somehow managed to miss starting our new year long tree study in the Autumn! So we have just begun a new year long tree study on the Acers in our garden. My husband and I love these trees and when our first child died we bought one in remembrance for him - its known as Joshua's tree. Since then we have bought one for each of the children - so now have 4 different Acers in the garden. Fortunately they are small trees!

We decided this year that each child would look at their own tree to become acquainted with them a bit more. I decided we would aim to take a photo of the tree monthly and look in more detail at the tree once each season so today it was time for the Winter study.

Joshua's tree

Ben's tree

Luke's tree

 

The following day after our study we had our first whisper of snow, so I took some more photos to celebrate making a proper Winter study!

 

 

 

 

 

 

We looked at the overall shape of the tree and how the branches came from the main trunk.
it is amazing that although they are all from the same family they are quite different, even in their bare Winter state.
Joshua's tree has a main trunk where the branches all come out of the top and bend out and downwards in a weeping willow like way, whereas Ben's has branches coming from the trunk at about 1/3 the way up and then from the top, which continue upwards at an angle from the trunk. Luke's has branches emerging from all the way along the trunk, many at right angles and Amy's was similar.

Here are the boys notebook pages

December garden/Winter tree

December has been rather wet and I realised I hadn't taken any photos in the garden - except these of the trees we are going to be looking of on our Year long tree study!

 

Summer Tree Study - Oak

We have had some lovely summer days the past few weeks and today we sat out in the garden to finish our year long tree study on our Oak tree.

We looked at the acorns in Autumn, bark and silhouette in Winter and the buds in spring and today on this lovely sunny day we took a look at the leaves.

We noticed the new growth and how the colour and texture of the new leaves was vastly different to the more mature leaves.

We had missed the flowering stage but we talked about how the oak has male and female flowers. Here is an image of the male flowers - drooping catkin like.

The female flower is much smaller and situated where the leaf attaches to the stalk. The catkin release several million pollen grains which are blown by the wind in the hope of pollinating the female flower, which them develops into the acorn.

Wow I never knew this about the oak tree - I must look out for the flowers next year - although as I mentioned in the last tree study its not always easy to observe as the branches start fairly high up! I trimmed the end of this branch so we could have a closer look to see if we could spot the acorns developing. This looks like them ; ) I also didn't realise that some oak trees have acorns that take 1 year to mature while other varieties take 2 years.

Here are the children enjoying their outdoor time.

And here are there notebook pages along with leaf rubbings.

I've really enjoyed our year long tree study and will definitely be choosing another tree to study next year

Spring oak tree

I had been keeping an eye on our oak tree so we could do our spring tree study when it was just bursting into bud, but it seemed to be a lot later than the other trees in the garden. Guess what - we got back from a weeks holiday in Scotland and found it was completely green - everything in the garden had grown so much with the sunshine!

The oak doesn't have any low branches and I kept forgetting to ask Paul to get the ladder to climb up to cut off a twig for us to observe more closely so we didn't really manage to catch it at the bud stage! Best laid plans and all that. Anyway we had a look at the nature detectives twig sheet at what the buds were like. I am amazed at how different they are and that you can identify a tree from its buds.

The boys filled in their spring tree sheets from handbookofnaturestudy with their observations.

We have enjoyed watching the squirrels chasing round the branches of the oak tree it has such great branches for a game of chase!

Winter tree study

We began a year long tree study in Autumn - choosing to look at the Oak tree in our garden.

On Wednesday we observed our tree in the Winter. It was rather a damp day so this is a photo of our tree on a sunny day!

We took bark rubbings

and sketched the shape of the winter tree observing how different it was from the Autumn.

Here are the boys notebook pages

I love seeing all the wildlife coming to visit the trees in the Winter. We are looking forward to the Big Garden Birdwatch next weekend. Do join us by registering here RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch 2014