Preschool Invitation to Read: Trees!

It's been a long week of "extreme cold warnings", which meant a lot of reading in our house. It also meant that we didn't get outside for almost a full week after spending time everyday outside for almost all of January. Needless to say we are VERY excited at the rising temperatures starting tomorrow!

As we didn't get outside this week, we tried in a few different ways to bring nature indoors. Firstly, we created our Spring Reading List. Then, we started diving into each of these books and creating an activity based on elements of the story (see the Toddler Obstacle Course inspired by Make Way for Ducklings).

The second book we chose to dive into and explore in more detail this week is one of our "collection" (keep and treasure!) books, The Magic and Mystery of Trees:

Book Review from Spring Reading List:

"Visual top pick! I remember seeing a online photo of a page of illustrations from Jen Green's The Magic & Mystery of Trees and instantly adding it to our list of "collection" books. The illustrations by Claire McElfatrick are a beautiful combination of art, photography, and illustration that bring to life many aspects of tree lifecycles as well as the ecosystem in general. This book has advanced concepts (mama learned a lot!), but is accessible to toddlers and preschoolers through visuals and discussion. It will be one we revisit for many years to come!"

Click book picture for link to purchase The Magic & Mystery of Trees

We were excited to find that this book contains visuals and overviews from the same perspective as wood rounds we recently added to our open-ended toy collection. By comparing the actual rounds with the visuals in the book, we learned what the rings on the rounds indicate about the tree's life cycle, including it's age and how some years supported more growth than others, and what the bark can tell us about the tree's age and type. It was very cool to use this to compare larger and smaller rounds as well as rounds with different types and ages of bark.

This actually also turned out to be the perfect set-up activity for reading Shel Siverstein's The Giving Tree - not only do we now know many things about a tree's life (including that it lived!), but we can also much more fully appreciate all the things that trees give us. Pretty cool to realize the table you are sitting on to read about trees is also made from one!

Thanks for visiting and stay tuned for more reading and outdoor adventures!