Disappearing Trees
Grade & Middle School Resources
Do trees have personalities, feelings,
fall in love, and have families?
POP QUIZ
Yes!
Trees have personalities but not so much feelings as they do not have a brain and nerve receptors. But study says that they exhibit behaviors that are like a being that has feelings. Trees have friends and look out for one another. When one tree is attacked by insects, it sends signals to warn other trees. When there is another tree or trees around in need of some nutrient like sugar, trees transmit such nutrients through the roots and help one another develop. Trees work together to create diverse forests!
Videos
Here are some videos for kids to get familiar with the other beings in nature, for compassionate, creative, and social emotional learning. The grade levels are just suggestions.
How Trees Work
(Grades K-1)
This five minute video on youtube kids, shows the world teaching us about trees, how they work, including photosynthesis, and why they are so important.
How Trees Communicate
(Grades 4-8)
This 2-minute animated video talks about the wood wide web, and how trees send messages to each other, and work together in a diverse forest
The Rainforest
(Grades 3-8)
This 4-minute video, originally at National Geographic Kids, gives an exciting beautiful overview of the rainforest. You can find the national geographic kids page associated filled with rainforest facts here.
Animal Symbiosis in Nature
(Grades 4-8)
This 3-minute video shows the symbiosis between butterflies and turtles in the amazon. It’s fun and cool and highlights the importance of biodiversity!
Sites to visit for teaching and learning materials
My Green World
(Grades 5-10)
My Green World is an Australian-based online educational platform dedicated to addressing global wildlife and environmental challenges through innovative, youth-focused education. Their programs seek to empower young people and inspire curiosity, worldwide. Has a mobile app and instagram. Offers learning materials on climate change, marine life, ecosystems, laws and conventions, plants and trees and wildlife species. Divided by grades 5-6, 7-8, and 9-10.
The Rainforest Foundation
(Grades 5-10)
A Foundation working with indigenous communities to protect the rainforests in Central and South America, and an excellent online educational resource for students to learn about the rainforest, the people and animals that live there, sources of destruction; illegal logging, climate change, agriculture, oil drilling, and mining as well as ways to engage in activism. It is a useful tool for college and high school student research. The site also has a kids section:
Grades 4 and up The rainforest foundation kids section has wonderful resources for grades four and up.
Kids can learn about the rainforests with exciting rainforest facts (this is a denser read for 5th grade and up), important rainforest terms, and rainforest games and worksheet activities which has mazes, crossword searches, a vocabulary quiz and fact sheet handouts.
Highly recommended: The site has a picture filled rainforest encyclopedia which is divided into sections on kids of the rainforest, briefly covering some of the cultural traditions, and everyday life of indigenous kids who live in the rainforest, plants of the rainforest which talks about some cool plants you can find in the rainforest.
Teachers can find teaching materials and lesson ideas on this site for grades 3-9 here
