A Visit from Melissa

Last week we had the opportunity to enhance our learning on trees by a visiting “tree expert.”  We had the great pleasure of having Hayden’s mommy, Melissa, pay us a visit. Having so much knowledge and experience with plants of all shapes and sizes, Melissa stopped by to share some information, as well as some hands-on activities, with us.

First, she gave everyone a paper with a sketch of a tree. She then invited the children to color in each section she described using the appropriate terminology; the crown, the trunk, the branches, the roots and the leaves. Most of us got very creative and included dirt, a sun, some clouds, water, and even flowers.

Next, while in groups of three, Melissa gave us a variety of leaves. She explained that the basic leaf is composed of a leaf base, stipules, a petiole, and a blade. Then, she gave us a print out that specified all these sections and invited each group to work together in finding each, including its veins and tip, on each of the leaves she provided.  Thanks Melissa for making us all feel like real botanists just like you.

Following the leaf activity, Melissa presented a slice of a tree trunk and familiarized us with some of its parts. We learned that the outer wood is called the bark and the inner wood, the center, is the heartwood. The parts between these two have different layers and each has its name; cambium, phloem, cortex, and heartwood.

And, for our final activity, we conducted an experiment. Melissa’s collaborator, Hayden, helped her with this one. Once again we were asked to get into groups of three. Hayden gave out a cup of water and a celery stalk to each group and Melissa went around asking each of us to squeeze one drop of red food coloring into the water. After we each got the chance to stir it around using the celery stalk, we put all cups aside. Melissa asked us to predict what we thought might happen. Some of us said the celery was going to die and others said it would not but instead it will turn red. Hmmm! What will happen?

As some of us suspected, something did happen to the celery. The next day, we noticed that “it got all watered up.” Someone described it as “the water went up tonight when everybody was sleeping and the red makes it change a little bit red.”  We couldn’t have explained it any better!  Another child said, "It looks like an autumn tree!"