Adopt a Tree

PROJECT: Getting to know a special tree
GOAL: To use all of the senses in exploring and observing a tree
AGES: 6 and up

Kids love blindfold games, and this one is no exception. In an area of the woods with a fair number of trees and not too much underbrush, blindfold your child and spin her around. Taking a circuitous route, walk her to a tree and place her in front of it. Encourage her to feel the texture and irregularities of its bark and to rub her cheek against it. Invite her to smell the tree and to walk slowly around it, feeling with an outstretched hand for trees or plants growing close by. If there are special features of the tree that she is missing, guide her toward them. Be sure she wraps her arms as far around the trunk as she can to get an idea of its size. When she is done exploring, lead her away from the tree by a roundabout path and remove the blindfold. Then, challenge her to find "her" tree. After a few false starts, my daughters each zeroed in on their trees and repeated all the touching, smelling and hugging as they verified that they had found their arboreal friends.

HOW TALL IS YOUR TREE?
To determine how tall your tree is, teach your children naturalist Edward Duensing's "thumb-jumping" trick. If you know your child's approximate height, you need only a straight stick. Have your child stand up against the tree. Step back so you can see the entire tree from top to bottom. Holding the stick vertically and at arm's length, line up the top of the stick with the top of your child's head. Place your thumb at the spot on the stick that lines up with your child's feet. This is your unit of measure. Now "jump" the stick up, so your thumb is lined up with the top of your child's head. Make a mental note of where the top of the stick lines up against the tree, then jump the stick again, so your thumb lines up with that new spot. Continue jumping until you reach the top of the tree. Multiply the number of jumps by the height of your child, and you will have the height of the tree. When we measured my daughter Rachel's tree, we had to "jump" her height 15 1/2 times. She is about 4 feet tall, so we figured her sugar pine was 62 feet tall. Teaching this trick may slow down your hike as the kids measure everything in sight, but it gives them great applied practice in multiplication.

HOW OLD IS YOUR TREE?
A tree's yearly growth depends on natural variables, such as water, sunlight, nutrients and temperature. To determine approximately how old your tree is--without cutting it down to count the growth rings--take a tape measure and measure its girth about 3 feet above the ground. Each circumference inch equals approximately one year of age.

If you have adopted a pine tree, there is another way to determine its age. As Edward Duensing explains in TALKING TO FIREFLIES, SHRINKING THE MOON, pine trees and some other evergreens grow in layers. Each year, a new set of buds grows into branches that look like the spokes of a wheel with the trunk as the hub. If your child can see the top of her tree, she can count the layers of branches down from the top to see how tall the tree was when she was born. To determine the tree's age, she can count all the layers she can distinguish, then look for scars left from low branches that have broken off. Finally, add four years for the period when the tree was a sapling. Remember, this trick doesn't work for all evergreens: Be sure your tree has that layered look before you start.

HEAR A TREE'S HEARTBEAT
For the early spring, when the sap runs, here is another revelation from Joseph Cornell, author of SHARING NATURE WITH CHILDREN: If you listen carefully with a stethoscope, you can hear the "heartbeat" of a tree. Find a thin-barked tree more than 6 inches in diameter and place your stethoscope against its trunk. Be very quiet. Move the stethoscope around until you can hear the crackling, gurgling sound of sap flowing up to the branches.