Gift of the Tree, Vol. 1 Book

Beautiful book, part of my 2nd grade curricula. I need to write a longer review. A great book for fall, the cycle of seasons, and the life cycle of trees. Moving to see how, during a large tree's very long life, all of the ways it contributes to nature: food and shelter for animals & insects; shelter/shade for humans; oxygen; to name but a few. After it falls, a tree continues to add to the ecosystem, too: nutrients to the soil; a base for fungi to grow upon; homes for different animals and insects; wood to be carted off and used.

Some of the concepts are a bit over the heads of some second graders. However, the upper level vocabulary can be gone over before reading, and a competent teacher can paraphrase certain tricky sections of the book. The story (fictional, yet full of factual information), contains a lot of emotions as readers learn to value the tree.

I do remember most of the kiddos crying at the ending: my little nature-lovers with big hearts. (I may inadvertently have influenced more than one student over the years to become a tree hugger, like me!)

A good extension activity, during animal science units or plant science units, is to give students a printed page with a black and white drawing of a large tree with many branches. Based on their acquired knowledge from these units, they can choose a season add details to represent it: such as flowers & buds in spring, green leaves in summer, changing-color leaves in fall, OR bare branches in winter. (I'm in North America, east coast, so this was the seasonal cycle for our area). They can also draw in likely animals & insects that would make this tree their habitat.