Celebrating Trees This National Tree Week
National Tree Week is an event run by The Tree Council, that takes place between the 23rd November and 1st December. It’s the UK’s largest annual celebration of trees and marks the start of the winter planting season. It’s a great time not only to plant new trees but also to remind everyone how fundamental trees are to our lives.
To help you take part in the occasion, we’ve cherry-picked 4 great Busy Things activities about trees. In this blog, we’ll be looking at:
What trees are there?
Trees are everywhere but it’s not often we take the time to really look at them. Autumn is probably the exception, as with their changing colours, they often look quite wonderful.
Why not take a walk around your school or local park with your pupils and really focus on the trees? You could collect leaves of different sizes and colours to make an autumn collage or try to draw one that is particularly striking.
You could also try and identify the different types of trees there are, based on their shape, leaves and seeds.
Our ‘Common trees’ labelling activity is ideal for this, so you could take a screenshot of it, print it out and take it with you!
Whilst out and about, you could also consider the two main types of trees: deciduous and evergreen.
Can your pupils find a tree of each type on the walk?
Back in the classroom, can they classify other trees as deciduous or evergreen?
Why are trees important?
Trees are one of the unsung heroes of nature. They provide food and homes for wildlife, create oxygen and clean our air.
You’ll understand better if you see how in action, which is where our interactive simulator activity, Tree World, comes into its own. It really shows the power trees have and why we need more of them.
The game is a great introduction to the carbon cycle, showing how animals and people create carbon dioxide that is then absorbed by the trees.
See how quickly things can deteriorate if you fell lots of trees or have lots of fires burning.
Play Tree World here for free. You can choose from Tutorial, Pioneer and Rescue modes.
Tree planting
A large focus of National Tree Week is the planting of new trees. Its timing after all is set at this time of year because it is the start of the winter planting season.
It’s definitely something that the children can get involved with. There are lots of charities that will help you with this, including the Woodland Trust, which has a dedicated school programme.
Tree saplings can, however, be quite fragile so it would be worth explaining this to the children prior to them handling the plants.
Our ‘Parts of a plant – intermediate’ activity could be instrumental here. By using it, you can discuss how delicate the roots are and what they do (or don’t do if damaged).
NOTE: Our ‘Parts of a tree’ activity can be used to show how trees change with the seasons.
Summary
We hope this blog has given you some inspiration to support National Tree Week.
As part of this blog, we’ve included several of our activities which you can play for free from now until 3rd December. These are: ‘Common trees‘, ‘Tree World’ and ‘Parts of a plant – intermediate’. To play them, you just need to click on the relevant link!
Want to see more activities?
If you’d like to learn more about of our science activities – we have over 200 altogether – why not take out a free 28-day trial with us! Simply click here for this. You’re more than welcome to have a virtual tour via Zoom too. If you’d like one, contact us here and we’ll get in touch!