I am really excited about diving into all the great nature/outdoor stuff that we can do in the month of October with children. The October Full Moon is on October 24th. Its usual name is the Hunter’s Full Moon or the Moon of the Falling Leaves because animals are fattening up for the winter and hunters took advantage of the falling leaves and animals on the move to do a lot of hunting. It is also known as the Dying Full Moon because of all the luxuriant plant growth of summer dying off in preparation for winter.
October is a wonderful month to focus on trees and their central role in both your local ecosystem and biome, and their place in your city or town. New Haven, where I live, is colloquially known as the Elm City, named after the Elm trees that used to populate the city streets but are now rare since the spread of Dutch Elm disease. Elm trees are a quintessential “city” tree” in that they were planted on greens and on city streets as a way to include “nature” in the urban environment. (Elms are indigenous to the Northeast but the first Elm was planted on the New Haven “Green” in 1686. http://www.gardenclubofnewhaven.org/new-havens-green-and-its-elms.html)
A central theme of my work is helping children overcome the alienation and rootlessness so many of us experience in the modern world by encouraging them to establish their roots in the natural world. If we can tell an archetypal story of how proto-humans came down from the trees to establish a garden in some fertile valley of milk and honey, and how humans came to build great cities and towns in the bosom of the natural world—towns and cities that ultimately turned against them as we forgot the sacredness of the natural living world— we can also make real a story of how we can return to the trees as a source of delight, sustenance, inspiration and understanding.
Fall is a great time to introduce children to the grandeur, beauty and significance of trees. Help children children find specific trees that they can attach to and go back to again and again. Also find groves, copses and stands of trees that you can play in and among, to develop an intimate sense of the interconnectedness of trees and how trees connect and sustain different organisms and parts of the world.
The school where I work at, Leila Day, is blessed to have a large London Plane tree, beautiful Red Cedar trees, tall, sweeping Eastern Hemlock trees (the traditional Christmas tree), the Norway Maple Tree dropping its little helicopter seeds, or samaras, a crazy Honey Locust tree that drops bean pods that contain a honey like paste you can eat, some Pin Oaks that provide acorns for the children’s fairy houses, and an unusual Tamarack tree that is one of the few deciduous conifers (the tree’s needles turn yellow in the Fall and fall off like the leaves of an Oak or Maple tree). My favorites are two magnificent Black Walnut trees that are somewhere between 125 and 175 years old! And there are several Eastern Pine Trees which are the tallest trees in Connecticut, growing up to 150 feet, and whose fragrant needles perfume our play spaces and create soft quiet places to sit!
Once you leave the confines of Leila Day and walk down Livingston toward East Rock Park there are some huge old oak trees that are probably the last remnants of an Old Growth Forest in the East Rock area of New Haven (or planted in their front yards by some forward looking townies). East Rock Park itself is a typical Oak, Beech and Maple mix with some beautiful, small Eastern Pine tree stands and a few “exotics” thrown in for good measure. I mention these particulars because the process of getting to know the natural world should always begin in your “backyard” and fan out to include inclusively greater swathes of the natural/cultural landscape and macro and micro elements of the ecosystem within which one lives.
Trees are the great connectors of the natural world, holding the soil together with their roots, circulating oxygen for animals and human beings, giving homes and the raw materials for homes for many animals, providing shade and a place to hide and climb for countless animals (and children), providing abundant food sources, providing wood for countless human purposes, as well the indescribable beauty, mystery, and grandeur that individual trees and forested landscapes bring to our lives.
The literature on trees grows by leaps and bounds with both outstanding children’s titles that are simple, straightforward and captivating, and fascinating books for adults that explore the natural and cultural history of trees in greater depth. Use children’s books to learn some of the basic stuff yourself, as a springboard for actual outdoor experiences, and as a way to reflect on and synthesize what the children are learning about. Some of my favorite children’s titles are Crinkleroot’s Guide to Trees by Jim Arnosky; The Great Kapok Tree by Lynne Cherry; My Favorite Tree: Terrific Trees of North America Diane Everson; How the Trees Got Their Voices by Susan Lion; The Tree Book for Kids and Their Grown Ups, Gina Ingoglia; A Log’s Life by Wendy Pfeffer; Sky Tree: Seeing Science Through Art by Thomas Locker and Candace Christiansen; and Tell Me, Tree: All About Trees for Kids by the ubiquitous Gail Gibbons.
Passionate, exceptional teachers combine a love and understanding of their students with a love and a keen understanding, or at least and openness to learning more, about their “subject matter” ( See Robert Fried, The Passionate Teacher)) Some great adult books about trees are: Reading the Forested Landscape: A Natural History of New England by Tom Wessels, The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate, Peter Wohlleben; The Song’s of Trees:Stories From Nature’s Great Connectors by David George Haskell, Urban Forests: A Natural History of Trees and People in the American Cityscape by Jill Jonnes; The Tree by John Fowles; and three great field guides pertinent to the Northeast ( get a field guide to the trees of your areas): Trees Of New England by Charles Fergus, Eastern Forests by Ann and Myron Sutton, and Bark: A Field Guide to Trees of the Northeast by Michael Wojtech. I strongly encourage teachers, even of young children, to do your homework and learn as much as you can about what you are going to share with your students. Sharing your interests, curiosity, passion and knowledge about the world is one of the greatest gifts you can give to your children.
Each part of the tree is deserving of attention but of course leaves are a great jumping off point in Fall. Leaves are great to stencil and collage with. Most of the classes make some kind of “stained glass window” either with wax paper or lamination. Leaves are fun to collect and compare shapes and colors and textures, and Fall is a great time to go on a “colors in nature” scavenger hunt. You can press leaves and flowers and make a book. And of course once they are on the ground we can rake them up and jump in them!
The roots are such a key component of a tree but it is tough to get at them in an experiential way. I always try to point out the roots that stretch away from a tree or notice the roots of an upturned tree. Another good way to get at them is to show kids pictures that have an above ground below ground divide, and encourage them to do their own drawings of what they think is going on below ground with the roots of trees.
Each different species of tree has a different kind of bark that you can a lot of different things with. Birch bark ( the white papery bark) is great for writing and drawing on and making fairy houses ( of course birch bark canoes were one of the great technological achievements of the Northeastern Native American tribes). The London Plane tree in our parking lot sheds its bark but I am not quite sure what we could do with it. Also bark rubbings are cool using crayons and paper ( experiment with a thickness of paper the won’t tear too easily—yellow manilla paper is usually pretty good).
Sticks and branches are such an integral part of outdoor play that it is easy to overlook them. A good framework for thinking about how to use them is to think about supporting kids in building large structures that they can play in (forts, cabins, hideouts, shelters, bridges); small structures they can play with (nests, fairy/gnome houses, sculptures); tools; imaginative play props; and art.
Many of us do stuff with apples, like make apple sauce, which is a good opening into trees as a food source for animals. Acorns are the major food source that squirrels, chipmunks, deer and many birds depend on this time of year. A quick jaunt in East Rock will reveal at least three different kind of acorns and help kids begin to identify different kinds of trees ( acorns come from oak trees). You can also use the sap from pine trees to make a little dab of glue and stick flowers on the kids ears and make instant earrings! Just another little thing you can do to demonstrate the bounty that comes from trees.
Trees also make a great focus to observe birds, squirrels and other animals. Try to help kids spend more time just observing the behavior of a squirrel or a bird. Kids can also do observational drawings of trees, leaves and acorns. And the older kids can begin to make “field guides” to the trees that they are most familiar with.
Climbing trees might be the most fun thing to do in the world but we always need to remember safety first. There is a great fallen tree on the other side of the Orange Street bridge that a lot of the after school program kids enjoy climbing on. Also help children find “sit spots” in the woods where they can sit for longer and longer periods of time, and just observe and experience what is going on around them. I also like to meditate in a grove of trees, reinforcing the connection and mutual interdependence between people, trees and plants in terms of breathing.
There are three more things you will want to expose your children to and draw them into exploring. One is the life cycle of individual trees: from seed, to sapling, to young tree, to a mature tree, to a dead standing tree (or “snag”), to a fallen log that rots back into the earth. Kids love crumbling a rotting tree and literally seeing it turn back into dirt. This is also an opportunity to explore the “decomposers,” mushrooms, wood lice, centipedes, etc. that turn dead wood into rich fertile soil that becomes the basis of new trees and new life. The second process that you want to clue your kids into is the different stages that trees go through in the course of a year: spring, the buds, new, sticky green leaves, and flowers; summer, and the dense mature canopy of the trees in all their rich variety; fall and the spectacular colors of the falling leaves; and winter with the stark skeletons of the bare trees and the resilient endurance of the evergreens. The third is to support children in exploring “the woods.”Think Little Red Hiding Hood, Peter and the Wolf, Robin Hood, the Knights of the Round Table, Hobbits, Winnie the Pooh, the Leather Stocking Tales and Dante ( “In the middle of the journey of our life, I came to myself, in a dark wood, where the direct way was lost.”) The woods are where we both become lost and find treasure and our true selves. The woods are just beyond the garden gate and the city wall, and our true primeval home. Just the other day we went to one of our favorite places along the Mill River ( “Steep Hill Park,” so named because it is a steep and challenging descent for the kids from the wooded path to the river), and we found ourselves in a magical cathedral of kaleidoscopic light, scintillating, swirling leaves and the fresh smells of the Fall forest. My “root children” were going home!
The kids I work with are so young that they are just beginning to experience these yearly cycles in all their power, beauty, symbolism, and significance. How do we want to impress on their young hearts the significance of trees in the natural and cultural order of things, and also nurture their fresh, curious minds with questions, problems, challenges, explorations and memorable experiences? This of course doesn’t exhaust all the wonderful ways you can explore trees and forests. I would love to hear from you about what you all are doing and your experiences in learning about trees as a child, an adult or with children.
As the weather cools the insects die and pretty soon you won’t hear the crickets, cicadas and katydids. The song birds are beginning to migrate south so increasingly the days will get quieter and quieter except for the raucous bluejays and mischievous squirrels. As always get outside and enjoy this glorious time of year. Native Americans revered trees as their elders. Trees (besides fruit trees) typically are there before you were born and live on after you die. Trees are a symbol and material foundation of continuity, stability and unity. Trees figure prominently in many creation myths from around the world the world. The Indigenous peoples of the North East often held community discussions underneath the canopy of a gigantic oak tree. The “Tree of Peace” is an Eastern White Pine tree where it is said warring tribes buried their weapons and created a peaceful union, the Haudenosaunee, or “People Building a Long House, the Iroquois Confederation. Later envoys from the American colonies met with the sachems or leaders of the six nations of the Iroquois confederation, and Benjamin Franklin urged his friends to create a similar union among the colonies. Progressive urban planners have long understood that trees should hold an important place in urban design and we will continue to go into the woods to find our true selves. Share all your best ideas with each other. To be a real supportive, joyous learning community of outdoor educators we need to share with each other what works, what we are struggling with and what we are having the most fun doing with the kids.
See you outside.