We  are so lucky to live on a park.  Our backyard butts up to the ball fields of a high school and the the adjacent park.  The phrases; “Meet me at the big tree,” and “I’m going to the big tree,” and “Can I go as far as the big tree?” and “We live near the big tree,” are all things that are commonly heard around our house.  Although the Big Tree is not technically in our backyard we consider it our backyard.   I have always wanted to learn more about our tree and somehow honor the huge beauty but have never gotten around to it.  So when the unplugged project for this week was trees, I knew we would be spending some time getting to know our landmark a little better.

We spread our sheet out under its shade.  First we photographed it from different angles.  Then we looked for some leaves from it and possibly some nuts, so that we could identify what type of tree it is.  We knew it was an Oak but we were still unable to pinpoint exactly what kind-as there were no acorns to be found-darn squirrels.

Then we sketched our big tree.

While the girls continued sketching and snacking I continued reading ,”The Jungle Book,” out loud.   I try to have a chapter book going with them and this is what we are reading now.

Then we tried to figure out the age of our tree.  First we measured 5 ft up from the ground.

Then we wrapped a piece of yarn around the tree at that height.

Then we laid that piece of yarn out straight and measured it with a yard stick.

Then with a bit of figuring…we found our tree to be 180 inches around.

It is said that a tree grows approximately   1inch each year-so our beauty is OLD-180 years old to be close. We are planning to  find some info of what our town was like 180 years ago and hopefully some photos too.  We finished up with a few crayon rubbings and talked about some future activities of painting  pictures of the tree and collecting some fall leaves to press.

We took a few bark rubbings and the girls tucked a few leaves into their sketch books.

That is one big, old, beautiful tree!!!

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