Personal Memories of Trees - First Grade

My first graders are beginning to study trees in their classrooms.

Though we looked at photos of trees and the children talked about them a bit, the lesson today was mostly about their memories that involved trees. Block tempera was used in painting their stories. I am fascinated at how differently each child depicted their tree.

This friend's story was about going to his Grandmother's house and swinging on a tree swing. The tree limbs seem to be moving and swinging as well. (If you look closely on the right, there is a little person swinging and a big person behind them pushing. That's quite advanced overlapping there.)



Though we didn't focus on the way branches come out from limbs, I thought that this fellow demonstrated a pretty good understanding.


The kids did talk about how trees had trunks and branches. This little girl knew that the two were separate things, but she bundled all the branches on top of the trunk. I guess from a little one's perspective, the trunks are huge, and then far away on the top of the tree are the little branches.


This little girl's story was about playing in a tree house with her sister. The limbs and branches weren't important to the story, so perhaps that's why she didn't include them.


This little girl was the first to volunteer that fall leaves tend to be orange, yellow, green, red and brown. I guess the paint palette was just too colorful to confine her leaves to those few colors.



This little guy had the most dramatic tree story. He said that he went with his Dad to cut down a tree, and it accidentally fell into a swimming pool. I'd have loved to have been present for that one.



Next week we will do closer observations of trees, and they will paint them with liquid tempera.