A Tree Study: Sycamore

At the beginning of the last academic year, Bear and I chose a tree near our house to do a nature study on over the course of the seasons to see how it changed throughout the year. The choice was easy as this big sycamore tree that we have to walk past pretty much anywhere we go is Bear's favourite!

During Autumn, we went to check it out and talked about what the tree looked like, using as many descriptive words as we could. We collected some leaves and enjoyed crunching through them and playing in them and throwing the helicopter seeds up in the air with The Cub while on our way home one day.

Once back home we did some leaf rubbings and put our findings into Bear's new nature journal. Writing the words he had used to describe the tree and some autumnal stickers that we'd bought a few days before.

As the months went on we watched the tree change and lose all of it's leaves for Winter and then stopped again one day to talk about it one day when we'd had snow. Going through the same questions and looking at the way the tree had changed. I'd purposely waited for snow and frost before we went to do our observations as I wanted his descriptive words to include the typical wintry words.

Again, we completed a nature journal page and Bear even did some drawings to go with it as we'd had some snow and been making snowmen in the back garden.

You get the gist now, we did the same thing in Spring and then again in the Summer and it was lovely to see Bear noticing the changes as the year went on instead of being prompted on them. He was so excited to see the new helicopter seeds begin to grow and still hunts for fallen sticks from the branches every time we walk by. The Cub walks by too now instead of being in his pram so has joined in the hunt for the best stick!

This year I decided that we should change tree so that Bear can see how different trees go through different changes, so we went out for a walk around the neighbourhood in the week before the start of September to find something new and settled on one of the big horse chestnut trees. We will be doing the same study this year, and comparing it to the sycamore tree too for comparisons.

I can't wait to see how Bear's thoughts have developed since last year and look forward to our journal pages!

I will keep you updated throughout the year on our findings.

Mama Bear x