Trees in your neighborhood

1. Prepare

While you are outside with your children, learn about trees in your neighborhood. Maybe you can also collect some leaves to remember trees once you are inside.

You can ask some exploring questions, like:

1. What trees do you know?
2. Which ones did we see on our walk?
3. What happens if all the leaves fall from the trees? What are the tree’s branches like?

2. Story

Once you are at home, and you feel that it is time to have some playtime activity, you can connect your experience outside and tell a little story: 

"Once upon a time, four trees grew in the forest. An oak, a rowan, a chestnut and a maple tree. Autumn arrived. The leaves fell from all the trees. The long autumn nights were dark. The trees started to tell each other of their wishes and dreams. The oak said: ”I would like to be a treasure chest one day. People would store jewels and gold coins inside me”.

The rowan continued: ”I would like someone to make a table out of me, on which lots of tasty food would be placed”.

The maple said: “I would like someone to make beautiful wooden stairs out of me. Girls in ballgowns would climb down these stairs to the ballroom".

Finally, the chestnut spoke of its wishes: “Well, I would like to stay in this forest, to provide a home and shelter for the forest animals”.

What happened? Nobody knows. There are trees that grow for hundreds of years. Others are used by people. In the hands of craftsmen, each tree can be useful."

3. Activity - build your own tree

Now you can suggest building a tree with building blocks. Whatever your child wants. However, he/she sees it. You can suggest to decorate it with leaves you brought home.

In the end, you can ask - what you have built and why.

Sounds accomplishable?

Leave in comments your idea, what kind of lesson plan you would be interested in. 

This lesson plan was created for:

• age 3 - 5. Obviously, you can change it in different ways to make it more suitable for your child.
• Aim of acitivity: to develop an understanding of objects in nature, phenomena and processes.

Here are some of our created trees.