Monday 19 October 2015

Nature Study: Autumn Trees

Last week, the topic from Exploring Nature with Children was an Autumn Tree Study. This involved choosing a tree to follow through the year.

Youngest Son chose a London plane

Younger Daughter chose a horse chestnut.

My choice was an oak. Fascinating trees and I enjoy the book Lord of the Forest ,by BB, which is a natural and social history of an oak tree.

The children stuck to their decisions but I found a tree which turned out to be an elm; realised that I don't know much about this tree, beyond the devastation from Dutch Elm Disease, and so changed my mind.

Elm leaves seem to be particularly effective for leaf rubbings. 
We started the year trying to make leaf rubbings with pencil but found that oil pastel is much more effective.

Younger Daughter did this lovely picture using elm leaf rubbings.

We are looking forward to following our trees through the year and hoping not to see a pigeon being attacked by a hawk which was a major sideline on this nature walk!


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2 comments:

  1. I'm embarrassed to say I had never heard of a plane tree until a few years ago! Near our previous house there were lots of large trees like oak, beech, horse chestnut etc. but where we have moved there are much smaller trees like rowan, mainly. Your leaf rubbings look really nice :-)

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