One of my favourite Christmas Carols is “The Holly and the Ivy” and it brings back memories of collecting both with my grandmother to decorate the fireplace with, it’s an old traditional British Carol as through our winters we don’t have many native evergreen plants and in the midst of winter these two stand out. We’re back after a short break joining in with The Playful Preschool bloggers team sharing ideas for preschoolers and you to do together that are creative and learning based. This weeks focus is all about Evergreen Trees, check the end of the post for other fabulous ideas that the team is sharing this week.
As a family we aim to get outdoors every single day come rain or shine, having a dog really helps, but finding activities that can motivate us to get out of the door and a nature hunt is always a favourite – sometimes in the winter this can be a little difficult finding nature but we’ve adapted it and can set goals like looking for specific Evergreen Trees or other plants that keep their leaves year round.
What you need for an evergreen hunt
- Knowledge of identification book of which evergreen trees you are likely to find
- Bag for collecting leaves that you can identify later
This is more about developing knowledge and understanding of the world around them, looking at seasons – it’s great to go out and follow the same route at different times of the year to identify what plants grow around the evergreen trees that you find on your winter Nature Hunt. But we’re also working on observational skills as well as science concepts and language.
An Evergreen Nature Hunt
Wrapped up warm for your weather head out to a wood, park or area where there are lots of plants of different types and you know that you will find evergreen trees.
It’s easy to spot evergreen trees – use your knowledge of the plants or your identification book to name the plants and photograph them, we collected a few of the leaves as we went to add to our collection and also to do some nature drawings.
Whilst on the walk, we looked at the deciduous trees, observing the branches and describing them. I have inquisitive children and they wanted to know what the trees were, I asked them how we could identify them in the summer – a resounding leaves and berries or fruit was the answer, typically my eldest J responded with “But they don’t have those in the Winter”.
Some hunting produced the answer – we had leaves they were just on the ground instead of on the tree – using the leaves they found they were able to identify what none evergreen trees were in the wood as well.
When we returned home we used our collections to produce some leaf rubbings and added items to our nature journals.
Connect, Explore & Learn with Nature
JOIN OUR FAMILY WILD CHALLENGE THIS SEASON
Challenge the family to learn about the natural world and experience some of it's highlights and earn certificates as you do
Check out these other Evergreen Tree based Creative and Learning based activities from the Playful Preschool Team.
Egg Carton Christmas Tree Math Puzzle by Still Playing School
Counting and Reading Skills Trees by Capri +3
Evergreen Tree Sensory Craft by The Educators’ Spin On It
Evergreen Tree Math Activity by Mom Inspired Life
Preschool Songs: Down by the Tree Farm by Growing Book by Book
Collaborative Pine Tree Process Art by Fun-A-Day
An Evergreen Nature Hunt by Rainy Day Mum