Then a few days later we woke up to a blanket of snow. They grabbed their shovels and cleared the snow off the back deck in no time flat.
We love winter weather!
A few weeks ago I pointed out a very large willow tree on one of our walks and gave each child a long branch to play with. They enjoyed the flexibility of the branch, using it as a fishing pole, and pretending it was a very long piece of hair on their heads. Since then they have been pointing out willow trees to me as we drive around town.
That evening I read about the willows in my copy of 'The Handbook of Nature Study', and I was intrigued by this part:
Although the seed of the willow is produced in abundance, it is hardly needed for preserving the species. Twigs which we place in water to develop flowers will also put forth roots; even if the twigs are placed in water wrong side up, rootlets will form. A twig lying flat on moist soil will push out rootlets along its entire length as though it were a root; and shoots will grow from the buds on its upper side. This habit of the willows and the fact that the roots are long, strong, and fibrous, make these trees of great use as soil binders. There are few things better than a thick hedge of willows to hold streams to their proper channels during floods; the roots reach out in all directions, interlacing themselves in great masses, and thus hold the soil of the banks in place. The twigs of several of the species, notably the crack and sand-bar willows, are broken off easily by the wind and carried off down stream, and where they lodge, they take root; thus, many streams are bordered by self -planted willow hedges.
So, we took a piece of our willow branch and placed it in a vase to see if it would grow roots. The children gave up hope rather quickly of its ability to grow roots, but I just left it on the table to see what it would do. I thought it might not grow roots since it was so late in the season, perhaps the tree somehow knew that October was not a good time to try to grow a baby plant.
Just yesterday I took another look and there was the beginning of a new root! There was also a leaf budding out as well.
I asked him to draw either a deciduous or a coniferous tree. He chose to draw an evergreen, and added a Christmas star at the top. He decided to draw spots all over the tree to represent the needles. He was trying to use the word 'stump' for 'trunk', so we had a little discussion about the difference between those two words. On the trunk he drew a magnifying glass and then drew the rings inside, something I had not been thinking about.
He still hadn't drawn the roots of the tree, so I asked him the simple question: "So, what is keeping the tree from falling over?" He looked at me blankly, and then said that the trunk was what held the tree up. I held a pencil up vertically on the table to represent the tree trunk and we watched it fall over together. It was not the trunk holding up the tree. I didn't want to just give him the answer, so I told him to go into the backyard and look at some of our trees. He came back and told me the branches were holding the tree up, because they were leaning on the tree next to it. (Hello? What is this kid thinking?)
Finally, I dug up a tree seedling growing in our yard (it was a weed, it was going to get pulled at some point anyway) and the lightbulb finally went on (finally!). He rushed in and finished his drawing. I've left the tree seedling on our kitchen table in some water so we can look at the structure of the roots in a different lesson.
