Trees can amaze you with their shape, size and longevity. The oldest fragments of a spruce still living in Sweden date back 9,550 years! The tallest in the world are the evergreen sequoias growing in California, USA, some of them reach a height of over 115 m. The thickest tree – a specimen of Mexican cypress, grows in Mexico 🙂 and has a circumference of 34 m. The widest crown in the world has a Bengal fig, planted in a botanical garden in Kolkata. It covers 1.2 ha, which is approximately the size of a football pitch.
In an art game we will create unique species of trees with lush crowns.
Goal:
- Introducing children to the visible morphological structure of a tree (trunk, branches, crown)
Time: 20 minutes
MATERIALS
- trunk – attachment 2.1
- white A4 sheet of paper
- watercolour paints
- marker (green or yellow)
- brush
- a cup of water
- rice, groats, lentils
Task flow
- Print the trunk template (attachment 2.1).
- Sprinkle a mixture of rice, groats and lentils at the crown.
- Trace the resulting shape. It doesn’t have to be a 100% perfect reproduction. We do not forget about the gaps created in the centre of the shape.
- Pour the seeds from the drawing.
- We paint the tree crown with paints. We choose colours depending on the season we want to illustrate.
The post was created as part of a project co-financed by the Deutsche Bundesstiftung Umwelt in cooperation with the Naturschutzzentrum Oberlausitzer Bergland.
