Oops, One More... Tree Bingo

Yesterday I finished my Botany Books post and was feeling all proud of myself. Then, walking down the hall at the end of the day to close the door of the Board Games closet, my eye fell upon Laurence King's Tree Bingo.
I pulled out the box, and what do you think was on the front?? Date Palm!

AARGH, I thought. We did that plant last week! But, of course, we can play the game at any time to help review the trees we've learned. Here are all the trees in the box (as with their other games, a fact booklet is included):

Alder (Alnus glutinosa)

Ash (Fraxinus excelsior)

Banyan (Ficus macrophylla)

Basswood (Tilia americana)

Beech (Fagus sylvatica)

Blue Quandong (Elaeocarpus angustifolius)

Bois Dentelle (Elaeocarpus bojeri)

Bottle (Pachypodium lealii)

Candelabra (Euphorbia ingens)

Cedar (Cedrus libani)

Chestnut (Aesculus hippocastanum)

Coco-de-Mer (Lodoicea maldivica)

Cypress (Cupressus sempervirens)

Date Palm (Phoenix dactylifera)

Dragon's Blood (Dracaena cinnabari)

Durian (Durio zibethinus)

Field Maple (Acer campestre)

Frankincense (Bowsellia sacra)

Giant Redwood (Sequoiadendron giganteum)

Grandidier's Baobab (Adansonia grandidieri)

Hawthorn (Crataegus monogyna)

Hazel (Corylus avellana)

Holly (Ilex aquifolium)

Jacaranda (Jacaranda mimosifolia)

Juniper (Juniperus communis)

Kapok (Ceiba pentandra)

Kauri (Agathis australis)

Larch (Larix decidua)

London Plane (Platanus x hispanica)

Madrone (Arbutus menziesii)

Maidenhair (Ginkgo biloba)

Monkey Puzzle (Araucaria araucana)

Nordmann Fir (Abies nordmanniana)

Oak (Quercus robur)

Olive (Olea europaea)

Orange (Citrus x sinensis)

Paperbark (Melaleuca quinquenervia)

Pecan (Carya illinoinensis)

Quaking Aspen (Populus tremuloides)

Quiver (Aloidendron dichotomum)

Rainbow Eucalyptus (Eucalyptus deglupta)

Rowan (Sorbus aucuparia)

Sandbox (Hura cerpitans)

Sassafras (Sassafras albidum)

Saucer Magnolia (Magnolia x soulangeana)

Scots Pine (Pinus sylvestris)

Shagbark Hickory (Carya ovata)

Silver Birch (Betula pendula)

Spruce (Picea abies)

Sweetgum (Liquidambar styraciflua)

Sycamore (Acer pseudoplatanus)

Traveller's Palm (Ravenala madagascariensis)

Tulip (Liriodendron tulipifera)

Tupelo (Nyssa sylvatica)

Upas (Antiaris toxicaria)

Walking Palm (Socratea exorrhiza)

Walnut (Juglans regia)

Whistling Thorn (Vachellia drepanolobium)

Wild Apple (Malus sieversii)

Wisteria (Wisteria sinensis)

Wollemi Pine (Wollemia nobilis)

Wych Elm (Ulmus glabra)

Yew (Taxus baccata)

Yoshino Cherry (Prunus x yedoensis)

What's in My Botany Books

First, I would like to update everyone that I'm no longer an Amazon Affiliate.

I cancelled my entire Amazon account last night after seeing news items about their invasive "About You" page and the new glasses their delivery drivers will be wearing to take constant photos of the path to your front door (that you cannot opt out of) which they can then use to train their humanoid delivery robots. This means that while in the past I spent a lot of time tracking down Amazon links to the specific books I was recommending, I will no longer be supplying links to purchase materials. I get most of my curriculum things used on eBay anyway, but Amazon was so pervasive that I felt those links were actually helpful to people. Now that so many people are boycotting Amazon, there's no reason for me to take the time.

End rant.

Instead of using a prepared Botany curriculum with a specifically laid out scope & sequence, we are just doing plants as they come onto our radar. They drop nuts, bear fruit, change colors, open flowers, give us a rash, etc. And we want to learn about them!

This means I need to look at my Botany books in a new light, and simply note which plants are covered in each. When we choose a plant, I can go to this blog post and hit "Find" to see if I have any resources for it.

The Burgess Book of Nature Lore
by Thornton W. Burgess

chapter 3
"Tommy's Insect Soup" - pitcher plant

I also wrote up a 2023 blog post detailing the Bloodthirsty Plants series.

Animal and Plant Anatomy
11 volume encyclopedia

vol. 1 - apple tree

vol. 2 - diatom, fern

vol. 4 - hawkmoth, honeybee

vol. 6 - marsh grass, mushroom, orchid

vol. 7 - potato

vol. 8 - saguaro cactus, seaweed, sequoia

vol. 10 - Venus flytrap, weevil

Diatoms and mushrooms are not plants, but we may end up talking about them and why they are not plants, so I want to remember that they're included. The hawkmoth and honeybee are pollinators; the weevil is a pest.

Drawing from the Book of Nature
by Dennis Klocek

chapter 11, "The Leaf"

11.1 - pinnate & lanceolate (willow), cordate (violet, morning glory)
11.2 - round or lobe-shaped (mallow), dentate (nettle)
11.3 - white oak, vetch, clover, cranesbill, carrot

chapter 12 - "Algae, Fungi, Lichen, Ferns"

12.1 - algae (bull kelp, fucus "rockweed")
12.3 - fern, horsetail

chapter 13 - "Higher Plants"

13.1 - bean, pussy willow
13.2 - plum - a perfect flower
13.3 - conifer (pine)
13.4 - tree growth
13.5 - venation (sycamore, maple, willow, poplar, birch)
13.6 - foliage shading
13.7 - live oak
13.8 - cottonwood
13.9 - birch
13.10 - fir
13.11 - apple

chapter 14 - "The Flowering Plants"

14.1 - shepherd's purse, cranesbill, storksbill
14.2 - crucifer (radish, burnip, mustard, cabbage, broccoli)
14.3 - bulbs (narcissus, jonquil, daffodil, crocus, amaryllis)
14.4 - rose
14.6, 14.7, 14.8, 14.9 - grasses (oat)
14.10 - legumes (peas, lentils, peanuts, beans)
14.11 - composites (sunflower, zinnia)

New Eyes for Plants: A Workbook for Observing and Drawing Plants
Margaret Colquhoun & Axel Ewald

an absolutely lovely book of seasonal art lessons!

chapter 1 - Late Autumn
potato, beech, groundsel, rose

chapter 2 - Winter
iceflowers, hogweed, oak

chapter 3 - Early Spring
snowdrop, horse chestnut, beech, tulip, daffodil, groundsel

chapter 4 - Late Spring / Early Summer
broad bean, sunflower, groundsel, cuckoo flower, musk mallow, charlock

chapter 5 - Midsummer
chamomile, peony, sow thistle, dog-rose, creeping buttercup, columbine

chapter 6 - Early Autumn
apple, beech, horse chestnut, wild cherry, vetch, buttercup, rose

chapter 7

yarrow, chrysanthemum, bramble, hawthorn

metamorphosis within the Brassica family:
Brussels sprout, cabbage, kale, cauliflower, kohlrabi

metamorphosis within the Rose familiy:
apple, rosehip, strawberry, blackberry, cherry

For my notes doing this block using Thomas Elpel's books, see Resources & Presentation Order for Plant Families. In that 2021 block I focused on Shanleya's Quest & Shanleya's Quest 2: Botany Adventure at the Fallen Tree

Matching Memory Games - Botany Edition

While working on my Botany planning for October, I found an old note about a Horse Chestnut card in Match a Leaf: A Tree Memory Game.

That inspired me to inventory all the plants included in all three Botany memory games!

First up we have Gardener's Match, which is largely a matching game between the whole plant and the edible food it produces. In an interesting twist, there are also two special cards (poison ivy & stinging nettle). If you turn over one, you lose your turn. If you turn over both, you lose the game!

Next up we have Double Take: Plants & Flowers. To the best of my knowledge, this game is out of print. An old copy was donated years ago.

In this matching game you pair the image of a flower with its close up.

The set includes Wonder Flower, Amaryllis, Hibiscus, Rose, Mum, Aster, Painted Daisy, Transvaal Daisy, Bougainvillea, Blue Hydrangea, Wax Plant, Loosestrife, Iris, Carnation, Lantana, Friesia, Hypericum, Blue Tit, Cyclamen, Flamingo Plant, Snap Dragon, Star Lily, Day Lily, Peruvian Lily, Moth Orchid, Sunflower, Scarlet Trumpet, Marigold.

Finally we have Match a Leaf: A Tree Memory Game. Like Gardener's Match, this game is made by Laurence King! Here you match the entire tree -- helpful for practicing identifying trees at a distance -- with a leaf picture.

The set includes

Red Maple (Acer rubrum)

Grandidier's Baobab (Adansonia grandidieri)

Horse Chestnut (Aesculus hippocastanum)

Monkey Puzzle (Araucaria araucana)

European White Birch (Betula pendula)

Shagbark Hickory (Carya ovata)

European Chestnut (Castanea sativa)

Swamp Gum (Eucalyptus regnans)

European Beech (Fagus sylvatica)

European Ash (Fraxinus excelsior)

Ginkgo (Ginkgo biloba)

English Holly (Ilex aquifolium)

English Walnut (Juglans regia)

Sweetgum (Liquidambar styraciflua)

Tulip Tree (Liriodendron tulipifera)

Olive (Olea europaea)

Scotch Pine (Pinus sylvestris)

London Plane (Platanus x hispanica)

English Oak (Quercus robur)

Northern Red Oak (Quercus rubra)

Sassafras Tree (Sassafras albidum)

Coastal Redwood (Sequoia sempervirens)

Giant Sequoia (Sequoiadendron giganteum)

European Mountain Ash (Sorbus aucuparia)

Scotch Elm (Ulmus glabra)

Now when I search my blog for the name of a particular plant, this post will pop up and I will remember that I have these resources!

This post contains affiliate links to materials I truly use for homeschooling. Qualifying purchases provide me with revenue. Thank you for your support!

Practical Botany in October

It's easiest for me to write up my notes in pieces, updating as we go along. Here, if you missed it, is my topic overview post: Notes on Practical Botany.

Now, on to the plants!

Milkweed

Common Milkweed (Asclepias syriaca)
Swamp Milkweed (Asclepias incarnata)

read Monarch and Milkweed by Helen Frost

look at dried milkweed pods & milkweed seeds

make Abstract Textile Seedpods from Making Zen workshop

nature sketch

add to MLB under Botany Basics (Seed Dispersal)




for more on Seed Dispersal

Seeds Move! by Robin Page

Bur Oak

Bur Oak (Quercus macrocarpa)

field trip to Superblock to pick up bur oak acorns & acorn caps

nature sketch

add to MLB under Tree Identification
note: oak wood is traditionally used in barrel making aka cooperage

The Mighty Bur Oak: Sentinel Tree of the Prairie Peninsula
Agricultural Electronic Bulletin Board, University of Missouri Extension

Another Gift from Oaks
International Oak Society

Judean Date Palm

Date Palm (Phoenix dactylifera)

read A Seed Is Sleepy by Dianna Hutts Aston

read The Miracle Seed by Martin Lemelman

open a fresh date to find its seed

nature sketch

add to MLB under Botany Basics (Germination)



Six New Ancient Date Trees
The Arava Institute for Environmental Studies


for more on Germination

Morning Glories by Sylvia Johnson (pp.14-15, 36-41)
available FREE at Internet Archive



terminology:
cotyledon, monocot, dicot, seed coat, embryo, endosperm

Osage Orange

Osage Orange (Maclura pomifera)

look at osage orange fruit and thorny branches

learn interesting facts about this tree - three links below

learn the term "dioecious" and cut open a fruit to see if the female tree it came from was pollinated (does it contain seeds?)

experiment with using osage orange as a natural dye

nature sketch

add to MLB under Tree Identification

note: due to its nasty spines, osage orange was widely planted as fencing to define property lines until the introduction of barbed wire (thus the name "hedge-apple")

Pruning the Osage Orange Trees
Martha Stewart

Natural Dyes - Harvesting Osage Orange
Folk Fibers

Osage Oranges in Peñasquitos Canyon
Friends of Los Peñasquitos Canyon Preserve

Persimmon

American Persimmon (Diospyros virginiana)

look at persimmon tree, leaf, fruit, and seeds

recipe?
here is my 2024 post of Persimmon Recipes

nature sketch

add to MLB under Special Plants - Edible

How Do Persimmons Breed?
Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center

Flower Dissection with Emily
Lowell Land Trust

terminology:
perfect flower, monoecious, dioecious

Chestnut

Chinese Chestnut (Castanea mollissima)
American Chestnut (Castanea dentata)
European Chestnut (Castanea sativa)
Horse Chestnut (Aesculus hippocastanum)

look at Chinese chestnut burr and nuts

recipe?
here is my 2023 post of Chestnut Recipes

look at European Chestnut and Horse Chestnut trees in Match a Leaf
look at Chestnut illustration in Tree Bingo
check fact booklet - what kind of chestnut is it?
scientific names matter because they prevent confusion!

nature sketch

add to MLB under Botany Basics (Scientific Name)


horse chestnuts are extremely poisonous and MUST NOT be confused with Chinese chestnuts; note that they share the first part of their scientific name with the also-poisonous red buckeye (Aesculus pavia)

sketch Chinese/American chestnut leaves (edible nut) compared to horse chestnut/red buckeye leaves (poisonous nut)

add to MLB under Botany Basics (Simple vs. Compound Leaves)


Match a Leaf: A Tree Memory Game

This post contains affiliate links to materials I truly use for homeschooling. Qualifying purchases provide me with revenue. Thank you for your support!

Notes on Practical Botany

We are beginning our study of Botany! In Waldorf, this is a major grade 5 topic. I have a LOT of resources in my stash already, which can be really overwhelming. So I've decided to just think about one plant at a time.

Since we are focusing -- if at all possible -- on plants that are located near us and doing something interesting at the present moment, I'm going to organize these notes by month. (I'm in the temperate forest in the Northern Hemisphere, so it's early Autumn right now.) We have two Botany MLBs which we will keep out and available all year, in case a plant near us unexpectedly starts doing something interesting. They are tricky that way!

Our two MLBs are divided into two parts each, so four chapters in all:

MLB #1

Botany Basics

Tree Identification

MLB #2

Special Plants - Medicinal

Special Plants - Edible

I even got different MLBs (one with onion skin and one without... both green of course) so that it's easier for the children to tell them apart while we are adding in our information. I'm excited to see how the books come together!

Many thanks to Ms. Megan for the Botany books she's lending us this year:

Field Guide to Edible Wild Plants
by Bradford Angier

The Lost Book of Herbal Remedies: The Healing Power of Plant Medicine
by Nicole Apelian & Claude Davis

Manual of Woody Landscape Plants: Their Identification, Ornamental Characteristics, Culture, Propogation and Uses
by Micahel Dirr

Midwest Foraging: 115 Wild and Flavorful Edibles from Burdock to Wild Peach
by Lisa M. Rose

Special Forces Survival Guide: Wilderness Survival Skills from the World's Most Elite Military Units
by Chris McNab

Stalking the Wild Asparagus
by Euell Gibbons

A Weaver's Garden: Growing Plants for Natural Dyes and Fibers
by Rita Buchanan

This post contains affiliate links to materials I truly use for homeschooling. Qualifying purchases provide me with revenue. Thank you for your support!

Factor Trees Are Confusing My Child

A special blog post for parents whose children find the process of creating factor trees to be completely opaque. You could also introduce this technique to a class before moving them on to factor trees. This is from Jamie York!

Without exception, I would recommend Jamie York's excellent book for Middle School Math.

Making Math Meaningful:
A Middle School Math Curriculum for Teachers and Parents

The process Jamie recommends requires rewriting the number multiple times, so just know that it will likely take your child one sheet of paper for each prime factorization problem. Let's take 270,000 as our example.

270,000

300 ⋅ 900

2 ⋅ 150 ⋅ 900

2 ⋅ 50 ⋅ 3 ⋅ 900

Get the idea?

It is a lot of rewriting, but the children can easily see that all of these rows will still multiply together to equal 270,000, which they CANNOT see with a factor tree. You just keep going until the whole thing is prime numbers.

2 ⋅ 25 ⋅ 2 ⋅ 3 ⋅ 900

2 ⋅ 5 ⋅ 5 ⋅ 2 ⋅ 3 ⋅ 900

2 ⋅ 5 ⋅ 5 ⋅ 2 ⋅ 3 ⋅ 3 ⋅ 300

2 ⋅ 5 ⋅ 5 ⋅ 2 ⋅ 3 ⋅ 3 ⋅ 2 ⋅ 150

While it may be tempting for us as adults to start to put the prime factors in order from smallest to largest, don't have a child do that. They need to get an idea of where these numbers are coming from! Plus, you want to be able to go back and check their work if they get the wrong answer at the end.

2 ⋅ 5 ⋅ 5 ⋅ 2 ⋅ 3 ⋅ 3 ⋅ 2 ⋅ 6 ⋅ 25

2 ⋅ 5 ⋅ 5 ⋅ 2 ⋅ 3 ⋅ 3 ⋅ 2 ⋅ 2 ⋅ 3 ⋅ 25

2 ⋅ 5 ⋅ 5 ⋅ 2 ⋅ 3 ⋅ 3 ⋅ 2 ⋅ 2 ⋅ 3 ⋅ 5 ⋅ 5

2⁴ ⋅ 3³ ⋅ 5⁴

When you are ready for factor trees, I love

You Can Count on Monsters: The First 100 Numbers and Their Characters
by Richard Evan Schwartz

See my past blog post on how to draw these "Monstrously" Cool Factor Trees

This post contains affiliate links to materials I truly use for homeschooling. Qualifying purchases provide me with revenue. Thank you for your support!

John Cage - Oh, How We Love You

This year I'm teaching an Art Club for 5 & 6 year old children.

I absolutely love John Cage...

and so I chose him as the focus of our first two Art Club sessions!

Beautiful Noise: The Music of John Cage
by Lisa Jean Rogers

In the past, we've often learned about John Cage in Philosophy:

Is It Music?
Jan 1, 2024

What Is Music?
Oct 12, 2016

My favorite quote ever from doing that lesson with children:
"That music lacked music."

If you're unfamiliar with 4'33" here is an NPR article:

The Story Of '4'33"'
https://www.npr.org/2000/05/08/1073885/4-33

A quote from this article:

For the second, the provisionally entitled "Four Pieces," Tudor starts a stopwatch, sits down in front of the piano, closes the lid and begins a performance in which he never plays a note.

After 30 seconds of silence, Tudor resets the stopwatch and times another two minutes, 23 seconds of silence, then another one minute, 40 seconds of silence. But is it silence? ....

The silent composition, which became known by its duration of four minutes and 33 seconds, was influenced by Cage's encounter with the so-called "white paintings" by his friend Robert Rauschenberg — huge canvasses of undifferentiated white whose surfaces vary infinitely with particles of dust and light reflections.

Nothing: John Cage and 4'33"
by Nicholas Day

John Cage was in the news during COVID:

A 639-Year Concert, With No Intermission for Coronavirus
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/07/arts/music/john-cage-as-slow-as-possible-germany.html

The long, slow performance of a piece by the American composer John Cage is scheduled to run until 2640. On Saturday, an audience in Germany heard a sound change — the first since 2013.

John Cage has come up in our Art History studies of Sister Mary Corita Kent, Yves Klein, and Yoko Ono. His book with Lois Long, Mud Book: How to Make Pies and Cakes, is also featured in my list of Books in ALL CAPS.

Mud Book: How to Make Pies and Cakes
by John Cage & Lois Long

We will also probably spend some time on John Cage when we do Inventors and the Slinky! In 1959, John Cage composed an avant garde work called "Sounds of Venice" scored for (among other things) a piano, a slab of marble and Venetian broom, a birdcage of canaries, and an amplified Slinky.

But on to my notes from Art Club:

Fri Sep 25 - introduction to mark making / graphic notation

read Beautiful Noise: The Music of John Cage by Lisa Jean Rogers

pass out large sheets of paper and colored pencils

make sounds and have the children create marks which go with them (shake water bottle, stamp feet, tap pencil, sweep broom)

look at examples of birdsongs in graphic notation

have each person sing one of the birdsongs
can we figure out which one they're singing?

have each person sing a wordless song of their choice
while we draw the colors & marks that go with their voice

set out a selection of musical instruments

demonstrate the sound made by each

have each person draw a set of colorful marks
then choose instruments and perform their "piece"

take a Nature walk and listen for birdsongs



this page is from a vintage children's encyclopedia

Fri Oct 2 - tactile exploration / sensory play

read Nothing: John Cage and 4'33" by Nicholas Day

sit on a yoga mat in silence for 4 minutes and 33 seconds
what did you hear?

add drops of food coloring to water and watch it swirl around

read Mud Book: How to Make Pies and Cakes by John Cage

go outside to the mud kitchen to mix up recipes!
to the mud we added our colored water and some seashells

I did a whole blog post on Fun Things We Add to the Mud Kitchen. I find that colored water is such a simple addition and a surprisingly big hit with kids!

This post contains affiliate links to materials I truly use for homeschooling. Qualifying purchases provide me with revenue. Thank you for your support!