Trees & Pumpkins

Talking about trees in kindergarten has been a lot of fun! We spent time learning about what trees need to grow, and we even adopted our own tree in front of the school. So far, we have seen the leaves on this tree change from green, to bright red, and currently, there aren't any leaves left on it!

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We will be watching our tree throughout the seasons and we'll be drawing pictures in our tree books. Each page has a blank tree for us to color during each of the four seasons - showing that we know what happens to trees throughout their life cycles and the seasons. Students have loved coloring their trees to match the seasons.

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One sunny afternoon, we decided to go outside and see if we could find some little branches with leaves on them that we could use as our own model for a tree.

After a quick walk in the school's wooded backyard, each student came in with a snippet from a tree. We wanted a real representation of trees for students to touch and label. Bringing nature inside is always a wonderful option! 

With a little bit of hot glue, we were able to glue the little branches onto the papers for students to label. Since the branches didn't have roots, students had to draw them in at the bottom of the branch. We printed up little label cards, after realizing that having students try to copy the labels themselves would be too overwhelming. Students took their time gluing them onto the page and adding arrows. 

Here is the bulletin board I created with my cooperating teacher! We actually painted the tree onto the red background, and used a sponge to add leaves to the tree. All students' papers were stapled onto the board, and everyone marveled at how wonderful it came out! Students were also very proud of their work! 

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Since it's October, we put our tree unit on hold so that we could talk about pumpkins. We talked a lot about the life cycle of a pumpkin, and to illustrate the life cycle, we worked a cute pumpkin craft, as seen on Lindsy's blog Preschool Alphabet. The kinders loved making their own pumpkins and coloring the steps of the cycle themselves. We're still practicing cutting with scissors, and this activity was perfect for that! (Unfortunately, I don't have pictures of these masterpieces - they all went home to parents.)

We added our own jack-o-lanterns to our tree bulletin board.

We took a trip to a local farm in the area, Stonewall Farm, where we went on a wonderful horse-drawn hayride and learned how to make apple cider one apple at a time! We also had a chance to meet the Great Pumpkin who taught us about the life cycle of a pumpkin! Hearing it from the Great Pumpkin instead of Ms. Preston definitely solidified the experience for the students.

Our own little pumpkin patch!

We brought pumpkins and trees together by creating jack-o-lanterns in the classroom. We lined our bulletin board with our own little pumpkin patch on a vine.