Bark Casts

Young scholars make plaster casts of tree bark.

Help young scientists connect with nature and learn about trees with a fun life science lesson. Heading out into the school yard, children choose a tree to adopt, taking measurements, writing descriptions, and drawing sketches of it in...

Instructions for two terrific ancient history lessons for your primary paleontologists are provided in this resource. The first involves the creation of fossil cast replicas using plaster of Paris. The directions are detailed, but the...

What are the differences between coniferous and deciduous trees? Supplement your tree lessons with a set of activities that has learners describing, naming, comparing, and reading about deciduous and coniferous trees. The activities are...

Students identify their special tree using all senses other than sight. They identify six different internal parts within a cross section of tree trunk (bark, phloem, xylem, cambium, heartwood, and roots). Students compare and contrast...

If the Lorax were to write a letter, what would he write? Introduce your class to systems and feedback loops through the whimsical stylings of Dr. Seuss. Learners take on the Lorax's point of view to write a letter, among other activities.

In this activity, students will make a fake fossil cast using plaster of Paris. A second activity on comprehending the size of dinosaurs is included in this file.

Students investigate their school forest and make their own miniature forest. In this forest investigation lesson, students read The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein and make alist of reasons to have trees. Students investigate trees by...

Students explore different types of trees with their senses. In this nature lesson, students play a game in which pairs use their senses to explore trees, blindfolded. Students then must find the tree they found when blindfolded. 

Students identify heartwood, sapwood, and a tree's annual rings, infer from a tree's rings what damage or stress might have occurred in its life, and make a time-line of human history that coincides with a tree's rings.