Our {mystery} tree

On the first day of October we went to a local park and picked out a tree to study!  I was inspired by Handbook of Nature study's newsletter to pick a tree, and study it all year long through each season.  We haven't really ever done that before, so this is pretty exciting.

I knew this particular park had some really interesting trees that I thought would be fun to learn about, so we ran some errands, and stopped at the park with our lunch.

 I grabbed some of the essential nature study tools, and we headed out. 

Of course Miss April was immediately up the tree.  She didn't skip a beat.  That girl loves trees.

The boys on their blanket, eating lunch, under our tree.  You can see April there still in the tree.

It was a quick lunch out kind of day.  This day was just so perfect, with a little breeze, beautiful sunshine, and we were pretty much by ourselves at the park.  I was trying to capture that, but this picture doesn't quite do it :-)

The leaf of this tree.  This was a bigger one.

The bark of the tree.

Aric was showing me the leaf he picked out for his nature study notebook.

We determined that it is a smooth-edged simple leaf.  This book has some common trees that have these kinds of leaves, so we decided that we would go home to look it up.  We looked online today, but still have not determined the type of tree this is.  We thought maybe a dogwood, but it doesn't seem quite right.  So, the search continues.  We are going to pick up some books at the library and keep looking.

Tree bark rubbing.  This doesn't work so well with colored pencils, but they got something to put in their book.

The picture I drew with Aric.  He wanted me to draw it for him.  He sat and watched me, and we talked about the different features of the leaf, like how the veins didn't match up in the middle, and how it was smooth on the edge.  He enjoyed that.

Another shot of April up in the tree.  It was so pretty how the sunshine was shining through.

April had a chance with the camera too.  This is one of the shots she took.  I really like that it caught a good shot of the whole tree stump, and the leaves.  It might help us in identifying this tree.

I'm really looking forward to watching this tree through the seasons.  It'll be interesting to note when, or if, the leaves fall of.  What the flowers look like in the Spring.  April loves this too, and already has our next tree picked out.  It was the perfect way to spend lunch at the park too!

Desiree