Designed with children in mind:

The Smithsonian National Zoo has “A Walk in the Forest” with six different animated walks. One allows you to take soil samples and measure soil pH. Another helps you learn how to identify trees using keys. Each is led by an animation of a real employee of the zoo. How cool is that!

University of Illinois Extension has a virtual walk in the woods and Secret life of trees. Both show photographs of actual forests. There’s a teacher’s guide with ideas, resources and many extras.

For children or adults:

Ever wanted to visit a redwood forest? Muir Woods has a virtual tour. There are 92 photographs, and you get to choose where you look next. The virtual tour always has good weather.

Florida Hikes has slide shows from various Florida parks.Check out the giant snails at Pine Land. Isn’t fun to see how different the landscape is at the different parks?

Finally, YouTube has a number of videos of walks. I like this one because the tour guide discusses, what else, science!

Hope you enjoy these virtual walks in the woods, and can talk your own walk soon.

Where’s your favorite place for a hike?

I. What is a tree?

Most of us recognize a big tree when we see one, but sometimes it may be hard to tell whether a plant is a large shrub or a small tree. What do you think? Brainstorm and write down all the words you use to describe a tree.

One definition might be “a tree is a perennial, woody plant that grows to at least 20 feet tall and has an erect (straight up) main stem.” Talk about what that means and if all the trees you know will fit this definition. Can you think of something more? Let us know what you decide.

II. Why study trees?

Trees are so important. Can you think of a list of benefits of trees? Here’s just a few we thought of:

• shade (really important in Arizona!)
• food and shelter for wildlife
• rubber
• paper and paper products
• source of wood products such as furniture, houses, pencils, musical instruments
• food for us
• fuel for heating
• medicines such as aspirin and quinine
• produce oxygen
• conserve water
• reduce pollution

Can you add to this list? Do some research to find more benefits of trees.

III. External parts of a Tree

Vocabulary:

• bark
• trunk
• crown
• leaf/needle
• branches
• roots
• twigs
• nuts
• fruit
• flowers
• buds

Make index cards with each of these names (make sure you have at least one card for each child participating.) Punch holes in the cards with a hole punch.  Cut pieces of yarn of various lengths. Find a tree outside and have the children attach the cards to the correct parts with pieces of yarn – a fun way to decorate a tree. Take extra cards and draw any parts that are missing, such as flowers, nuts or fruit. Add those to the tree where they might be found. Older children can discuss the function of each of the parts, such as roots hold up the tree (support) and bring water into the tree. (Scissors speed up card removal when you are finished.)

Sketching trees is a good way to learn the shape of different kinds. Claire Walker Leslie has an excellent guide to sketching trees (click on the Guide to Tree Sketching resource to download a .pdf file). Sketch a tree and label the parts if you can’t go outside.

IV. How Trees Grow – The Internal Parts of a Tree

See if you can find a “tree cookie,” a cross-sectional piece of wood through a tree trunk. These are often available at craft stores. Those with the bark still on are the best.

Internal parts of a tree:

• cambium – layer of active cells that divide to form inner bark and sapwood
• sapwood
• xylem – water carrying elements (in sapwood)
• phloem-food carrying elements (inner bark)
• heartwood

Look at the tree cookie and see how new rings are added each year. Explain how the tree only grows from the cambium and cutting it (for example by carving initials on a living tree), damages its ability to grow and live. A fun demonstration of how a tree grows might be to add layers of clothes to a doll or person, to show how the tree expands by adding layers. See if you can tell how old the tree that made the tree cookie was when it was cut down by counting the rings. (More information on internal parts).

We’ll continue with more activities next week. Until then, here are two sources of more information about trees:

Illinois Department of Natural Resources has  lesson plans in .pdf format

Arbor Day Foundation has education links and online games.

Hope you enjoy our celebration of tees this month. If you have any suggestions for activities or websites, please let us know.

You may have heard on the news that honey bees are disappearing. The Hive Detectives follows the research of four scientists trying to figure out what is going on, as well as discussing a lot of general information about honey bees.

In the 1990’s I co-authored a set of lesson plans about honey bees, called “Africanized Honey Bees on the Move” for the University of Arizona. At the time the Africanized honey bees had just moved into Arizona, and many people were concerned about them. The lesson plans have a number of hands-on activities to do with many aspects of honey bee biology. If you go to a grade level, it will list appropriate lessons. Each lesson has links to activity and information sheets. Many of the lessons can be adapted to mixed-age groups.

Here are some honey bee-related activities and links:

1. Gardening for bees

Honey bees require pollen and nectar from flowers in order to survive. One simple activity is to investigate what kinds of bee-friendly plants grow in your area and have your children design and plant a bee garden.

You may wonder if encouraging honey bees to visit flowers in an area with children might be dangerous. It turns out that bees collecting food, called foraging bees, are not likely to sting unless they are stepped on, caught or otherwise threatened. This might not be an appropriate activity, however, for children who are allergic to bees.

(The first two websites were recommended in the book).

Pollinator.org has planting guides to help you find appropriate plants.

The Haagen-Dazs help the honey bees website has simple instructions for a bee garden, as well as funny videos.

What can the layperson do to help the honey bee has a lot of practical information about gardening for honey bees and other things you can do to help honey bees.

And don’t forget the Great Sunflower Project mentioned in a previous post.

These flowering plants help all kinds of pollinators, not just honey bees.

2. Honey bees and water

Any idea what these bees are doing?

Honey bees need a lot of water, especially in the summer. They use the water to cool inside the hive, to prevent the wax honeycomb from melting. You can see the tongue, called a proboscis, sucking up the water at the edge of this lily pad.

Getting water can be dangerous business for a honey bee. Honey bees often end up falling in, like the ones you see in swimming pools. Can you design a safe place for honey bees to gather water to add to your garden?

3. Honey bee communication and dances.

One of my favorite lessons was always doing the honey bee waggle dances as a way of learning how honey bees communicate.

Dancing under a polarized sky also has a lot of information about honey bee dances.

4. Honey bee senses

Honey bees perceive the world in a way that is very different from humans.

Honey bee senses lesson

What a bee sees

5. Honey bee and other bee nests

Investigate where honey bees live, where beekeepers keep bees and what it is like inside a hive.

The Insect Architects post has a some information about honey bee homes.

You can supply nest sites for other kinds of bees.

I don’t know whether you can read it, but the sign says “Digger Bee Nest Site.” We have left a patch of soil for the tiny digger bees to nest in.

The solitary and social bees lesson has a explanation of the different kinds of bees and how to construct an orchard mason bee nest.

There are a lot of ways to use honey bees as examples for science and nature lessons. Please let me know if you would like more information about any of these activities or if you have found a great website that helps children learn about honey bees.

Books to help you find out more:

In addition to The Hive Detectives,

you might be interested in these other books about bees from a precious post:
For young children you might want to try The Magic School Bus Inside a Beehive

Are you a Bee? is an intriguing book that compares humans and honey bees in an informative and gently humorous way.

The Bumblebee Queen by April Pulley Sayre (Author), Patricia J. Wynne (Illustrator) is a positively gorgeous book, chock full of good information. Any child who is interested in bees will love this book.

A Country Year by Sue Hubbell has some interesting tidbits on keeping honey bees, although it is about many other aspects of the natural world as well. A few of the chapters can some information that could be considered adult, such as she briefly discusses her divorce. You might want to read it first to determine if it is suitable for your older children. I have to say my son and I love it and I read it to him almost every summer (a summer tradition).

Book of Bees by Sue Hubbell contains a lot more technical information about beekeeping. There are many other books about beekeeping available, but this one warms my heart because it also shows more of the human side of the experience.

Note: the book that inspired this post was found at our local library.

A. Is it honey bees or honeybees?

When in graduate school, I learned a convention from Dr. Roger Morse for insect names (I have since learned the idea originated with Robert E. Snodgrass). The insect names that are taxonomically correct, such as honey bees are actually bees, should be written as two words. Insect names that are not accurate in identification are given as one word. For example, whiteflies are not really flies, but are relatives of aphids, and thus should be one word.

Quiz (answers at the bottom of this post):

Pick the correct common name according to this convention:

1. Butter fly or butterfly?

2. Crane fly or cranefly?

3. Dragon fly or dragonfly?

4. Lady bug or ladybug?

5. Leaf-footed bug or leaf-footedbug?

Photo from Wikimedia

6. Bumble bee or bumblebee?

The convention is only a rule of thumb, however, because there are definitely exceptions:

Photograph by Craig Pemberton. Wikimedia

Although this creature is really a wasp, it’s common name is velvet ant (2 words).

B. Mantis or mantid?

This distinction is more difficult. I had learned that either is correct, that is the two terms are interchangeable. There is, however, a growing convention that mantis only be used for the insects of the genus Mantis, and that all others be called mantids. (Whitney Cranshaw, Colorado State University).

I personally like to use mantids for the plural, it is just easier.

For a searchable list of common names for insects of North America, see the Entomological Society of America

Let me know if you have any questions about insect names or would like to learn more.

Answers:

1. butterfly

2. crane fly (two words)

3. dragonfly

4. ladybug (Note: if you use beetle, then it is two words,  lady beetle or ladybird beetle)

5. leaf-footed bug (2 words)

6. Bumble bee (2 words)

A new book, Bugs and Bugsicles: Insects in the Winter by Amy S. Hansen and Robert C. Kray (illustrator) gives us the answers for a number of common species of insects and a few uncommon ones, too (see review at Wrapped in Foil).

What happens when we get cold? We put on more clothes, and our bodies work extra hard to produce more heat. We may even shiver. Insects can’t do those things as easily, and are thus susceptible to cold and freezing. They do have some “cool” strategies to get through the winter, though.

Activities:

1. Pick an insect and investigate its life cycle.

Each kind of insect has a unique life cycle. By investigating the stages an insect passes through, you can figure out which stage or stages the insect is in during the winter.

Insects may overwinter as eggs, which are small and resistant to drying out. Other insects overwinter as immatures, called “nymphs.” As you will see below, there are insects that go through the winter as larvae. Others, such as moths, may stay cozy in protective cocoons and overwinter as pupae. The remaining insects spend the winter as adults, often hidden in cracks and crevices, such as in the bark of trees.

A few insects and insect relatives seem to defy their cold-blooded roots and can be found active in the winter. One example are the snow fleas, a type of springtail or collembola. We once spotted the tiny black creatures hopping across the snow while we were cross-country skiing. Wow!

If you are interested in ants, check out Where do ants go in the winter? at Wild About Ants. One species is called the “winter ant.”

Monarch butterflies are interesting insects because they fly long distances, or migrate, to avoid the winter cold.

This is a video about overwintering monarch butterflies. It is a trailer for the Discovery Channel show Life. Note for parents of sensitive children: the video does show birds eating butterflies and a butterfly covered with frost (presumably dead).

Have monarch butterflies appeared where you live yet this year?

2. Activities with acorns

We recently went to a talk by entomologist Mark Moffett and he told us about insects that spend their lives in acorns. He said that if you put acorns in a container of water, the ones that float are likely to have critters inside. The most common insect found inside an acorn is the acorn weevil. Ants, moths, and flies sometimes use acorns for homes too.

Video from National Geographic showing the life cycle of the acorn weevil.

Note to parents of sensitive children: This video shows a predator eating an acorn weevil larva. The larvae spend their first winter in the acorn and theier second winter underground as pupae.

See more acorn activities at  Acorns for Rent

3. Examine the properties of water when it freezes.

Living cells are full of water. What happens to water when it freezes, such as during the winter?

Bugs and Bugsicles has two hands-on experiments in the back to help children explore the freezing process.

The author also discusses how one insect uses a special strategy to get through the super cold winters of the far north. Without giving away all the details, let’s just say it involves antifreeze. And bugsicles!

This book was provided by the author.

For more information:

Bug Info “Where do insects go in winter?” – Smithsonian Institution Encyclopedia

Winter Hideaways at the University of Kentucky

Where do bugs go in winter? at About.com

Yes, we were in San Francisco last week. We got to see a lot of interesting new things.

Let us know if you decide to participate in the ant study. We’d love to hear what you find out.

It has a space age-looking green roof.

Yes, these are pictures of the actual roof. Any ideas what the gray strips with wire over them are? Here’s a close up:

We were told they are the pathways that allow people to walk through for maintenance or study. The gray rocks are lightweight pumice or lava rock. They could also be for drainage.

Although we saw different types of plants growing on the roof, the most common are perennial strawberries.

Why would anyone want a green roof? We learned that the roof helps moderate the temperature of the building, creates less water run off during rains, and supplies food for wildlife.

Although green roofs have been around for a long time, these roofs are designed with modern materials and are often used on much larger and more complicated building than in the past. If you like the idea of a green roof, here are some ideas for activities:

1. Research green roofs and then design and create your own small green roof model. Two things to consider are the weight of the planting materials (the lighter the better) and how to make sure the bottom layer doesn’t leak. Experiment with different materials and see how long they last. Google Sketch-up is a free software that makes designing easy and fun.

2. Find out which plants are used on green roofs in your area and try growing some in small containers, such as flats. Experiment with similar plants. See if you can find a type of plant, or mix of plants that grow well in roof conditions. Sedums are often popular green roof plants, but my son is trying the ground cover dichondra on his model green roof.

3. See how a green roof changes the temperature of the building it covers. Compare the temperatures inside a box covered with plants versus one with standard insulation versus an uncovered box. Look at the range of temperatures over time, if possible.

4. Look at how much water runs off a green roof versus a conventional roof during a rain storm. Think about how you would test this and design and experiment. Can you collect the run off?

5. Investigate what kinds of wildlife are attracted to green roofs. The California Academy of Sciences’ roof had a bee hive on it.

We’d love to hear about your green roof projects.

For more information, try:

Green Roof at California Academy of Sciences

Green Roof Design Lesson for grades 9-12  at Science NetLinks

Research Paper of Green Roofs, which gives history and details for construction

The sunflower project involves growing a specific type of sunflower, Lemon Queen, and recording the types and how many bees come to visit the flowers.

This year the organizers are asking the participants to buy their own seeds because they can not fulfill the orders for the huge number of requests they received last year.

If you are interested in participating, the first step is to go to the website and register.  You will  find more instructions there and get future newsletters with information and updates.

The sampling protocol has been simplified a bit. This year you and your children will:
1) count the number of flowers on your plant with pollen;
2) record all bees (not just the first 5) your sunflower for 15 minutes; and
3) enter the data online.

Our family participated last year. I have to say I hadn’t had much success growing sunflowers before, but these Lemon Queen variety seeds grew beautifully.

We had quite a few bees visiting, although no honey bees.

Did you participate last year?

Let us know, we’d love to hear from you.

We added his results to the site today, and it was quick and easy.

If you did the count, we’d love to hear your results.

Even if you don’t know a house sparrow from a chickadee, the site has some good information about birds, checklists of birds found in your area, and instructions about data collecting. There is also a list of related backyard activities you can do. Best of all, it’s free!

Our family will be participating, because my son is an avid birder. He is also a bird photographer, so he may take part in the photo contest. Note:  photos must be taken during the count weekend.

Aren’t burrowing owls cute? (Now, why can’t I take photos like that? )

If you and your family take part in the bird count, we’d love to hear about your experiences.

For more information, try these books: