October Grid for the Outdoor Nature Hour

These are the two books we read to fulfill the square of the grid that said, "Read a book about trees from the library."

The bundle of pine limb we found in the woods

Counting the pine "leaves"

During a recent walk in the woods, I found a limb of a pine tree. It still had the bundle of needles attached. I brought it home and my older kids and I counted the number of leaves in the bundle. We did not count the individual pieces, but counted a pine straw with the top attached. We were found that this bundle had 105 leaves.

You can only just see the swing to the far left of this picture. 

Another view of my back yard.

Another of the grid squares said for us to count the number of trees we could see from our window. We had a nice day, so I had them count the number of trees they could see from the swing in the back yard. You can see from the pictures above that this was a rather daunting task. The first time my middle  daughter counted, she got 37 and didn't count any of the heavily wooded area she could see at the back of the lot 2 houses over. My son counted 40 using the same method. Then they decided to count those trees in the heavily wooded area, too. My daughter got 100, and my son got 115. There are lots of trees in that area, and to my {{older}} eyes, the ones in the second yard over just blend into one mass of "forest", so I will take either of their words for it.

Another square asked that the kids photograph 4 parts of a tree. From left to right, top image to bottom images: trunk, crown (in center of photo), leaves and limbs and root. The above were the images my middle daughter took of a Black Jack Oak.

 

  These are the pictures my son
took. From left to right, crown, leaves, root, trunk of a long leaf pine.

The last thing we did for the October grid was to measure trees.

 

 

 

 

 

 
They liked this assignment. Most of the trees were long leaf pines, but 2 were unknown small trees.

I am submitting this to


Please go to the Handbook of Nature Study. At the end of the month, Barb will publish all the submitted articles for this month.