Nature Tag - Tree Version

Explorations in Ecology for Children and Their Adults: Transformational Activities for All of Us

Note: For now, this blog is a serialization of a book titled Explorations in Ecology for Children and Their Adults: Transformative Adventures for All of Us. Here is the preface. The first field trip is Taking Education Outside.

Names are the way we humans build relationship, not only with each other but with the living world. Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass

Introduction

This field trip involves playing a form of tag. Along the way, participants learn to categorize and name some contributors to their local ecosystems: those commonly known as trees. I am challenged by remembering names. I also believe that knowing names is the beginning of developing a relationship with the named being or entity. Knowing the names of the trees around us helps us feel more comfortable in our home ecosystem.

Using our senses to observe what’s going on around us is central in at least two ways: (1) It is one of the first activities we engage in as we grow into ourselves and when we find ourselves in new situations.. (2) Categorizing and naming are also critical for understanding ourselves, others, and the natural world around us. From the time we first call all dogs a dog, we improve our ability to sort and name other beings, places, things, and happenings as part of forming relationships with them. 

My wife once asked one of the children in our care what she had learned that day.  I could barely keep from laughing as the child replied, “Nothing” and then continued that “we had spent most of the day playing tag using Black Oaks, Live Oaks, Manzanitas, and Jefferies, Coulter, Sugar, and Ponderosa Pines as bases!” That child definitely could have identified some but certainly not all of those trees before we played that day!

Activity

I like to start the game with all the people who aren’t the tagger touching a tree. The person who is, then calls out a tree name and everyone else has to run to touch a tree of the named type. I start the game with me as tagger and usually stay in that role unless someone else requests it.

As tagger, the idea is that I can tag anyone I catch while they’re running or if they pick a wrong tree. I do everything I can to keep the game playful and haven’t tagged anyone in years. The kids either don’t notice or don’t care.  They just gleefully run through the woods touching trees getting to know them by look, smell, touch, and name.

I play the game at different levels of difficulty depending on the knowledge level of the kids in the group. The game works fine with just an adult tagger and a child. At the first level, I group the trees into the fewest groups possible based on easy and taxonomically correct distinctions. For example, all Oaks produce acorns and at least some caps should be visible at most times; All pines have needles; All conifers produce cones of some kind. 

In the San Jacinto mountains, where I live a very large percentage of our trees are Oaks, Pines, Incense Cedars, or Manzanita so I usually start with two or three of those taxa. After working up to all four of those types, I break the Oaks and Pines down into species. At the hardest level, I use all the species in the selected taxonomy included later in this field trip. I mix the teaching in with playing the game, doing the minimum amount of talking required before we start playing. When you’re driving or walking around your neighborhood, look up and discover what the trees are around you.

The kids invented an extension to this game that I just love and have included ever since. They can “cheat” by picking up and even carrying any identifiable part of the named tree. Cheating enriches the learning experience from my point of view (they’re learning to identify trees from various parts of the trees) and allows them to trick me from theirs!

If you’re familiar with the tree distinctions at the level you’re going to play at, you’re ready to go. For a little more background information before you play, then read on.

Some Nature Science

The particular trees named in this field trip are the most common in the San Jacinto Mountains of Southern, CA. This is land taken from the  Ivilyuqaletem or Cahuilla  Peoples. While I use the common names of these trees assigned by colonists. I am well aware that these trees had names long before Europeans colonized these lands. I encourage you to learn the land you are on and the original names of the flora and fauna around you.

As mentioned above, the first-level tree categories I help kids learn about in Idyllwild are Pines, Oaks, Incense Cedars, and Manzanitas. These types of trees are fairly easy to distinguish. All of our pines are evergreen and all pines everywhere produce pine cones. All oaks produce acorns. While most oaks in the eastern USA are deciduous, many of ours in California are evergreen. Manzanitas are also easy to recognize. They all have wonderfully smooth reddish bark that is fun to feel and produce sticky fruit that will stick to your hand if you place them in your palm and turn your hand upside down (and make a wonderful tea!). The next level I use is to break down the Pines and Oaks into several common species. The most detailed breakdown I use with older children is the selected taxonomy of trees below.

Conifers are a class of trees that are common in many regions. They are a type of tree that does not produce flowers but instead produces “naked” seeds that are not enclosed in a fruit. Most, but not all, conifers are evergreen, meaning they do not lose their leaves in the winter. The most common conifers in the San Jacinto Mountains are Pines and Incense Cedars. The most common flowering and “fruit” producing trees in these mountains are the Oaks and the Manzanitas. While many fruit-producing trees worldwide are deciduous (i.e., lose all of their leaves in the winter), many of those that grow in a Mediterranean biome like ours are evergreen. And yes, acorns and other tree nuts are the fruits of nut trees (e.g., Oaks, Hazelnuts, Pecans, Pistachios, and Walnuts).

Here are the species of pine and oak I use when we play this game in the San Jacinto Mountains (Avii Hanupach in Mojave):

Jeffrey Pine (Pinus jeffreyi) wexet [Cahuilla]; hellykaay [Kumeyaay]: Three long needles per fascicle (bundle), prickle at end of the scale on cones is bent inwards (gentle Jeffrey), bark smells of vanilla (check for ants before you sniff!)

Coulter Pine (Pinus couleri) wixe'tut [Luiseno]: Three sharp pointed needles per fascicle (bundle), huge egg-shaped cone

Ponderosa Pine (Pinus ponderosa): Two or Three needles per fascicle (bundle), prickle at the end of the scale on cones is bent outwards (painful Ponderosa)

Sugar Pine (Pinus lambertiana): Five long needles per fascicle (bundle), long cones (up to eighteen inches),

Incense Cedar (Calocedrus decurrens) tovot [Luiseno]: Flat branching “leaves”, stringy bark

Manzanita (Arctostaphylos) Big Berry - kohul; Mission - muukul [Luiseno]: One of several species of this genus found on the mountain with smooth red bark and sticky (yummy) berries that often remain on their tree for a long time.

Interior Live Oak (Quercus wislizeni): Tall tree with thick, leathery, spiny, ovoid, evergreen leaves.

Black Oak (Quercus kelloggii) muukul [Cahuilla]; kwiila [Luiseno]: Tall tree with deciduous leaves each with five-seven toothed lobes.

Educational Tip

As you may have already gathered, we believe that helping children become more ecological is a key to humanity’s future. We also believe that learning to be more ecological requires more than learning nature skills and ecology. It requires learning environments and communities that are more like forests and less like factories. You may also have already encountered our idea that creating such environments requires synthesizing patterns of relationship, characteristic of forests with those that characterize factories. One such synthesis involves the way that activities and learning occur in forests versus factories. In forests, activity unfolds and learning happens as beings bump into each other and the rest of their environments as they seek to fulfill their needs. In factories, activities and learning happen as mechanisms and humans alike perform preprogrammed tasks. In factory-like schools, almost all activity is programmed as kids are marched through a prescribed curriculum. Then there’s recess where fortunate kids get a few moments to fulfill their own needs. Progressive factory-like schools expand these moments of freedom to include lots of electives or even mornings dedicated to preprogrammed academics with afternoons dedicated to children pursuing their passion projects. While this approach does provide some of each kind of activity, it is certainly not a synthesis of them.

Nature-tag and all of our field trips on this blog do synthesize the benefits of both kinds of activity by meeting the needs of participants while also leading to a predictable outcome. This synthesis is not unique to these field trips. We believe that all skills and concepts can be learned through this form of guided activity.

Wrap-Up

The tree version of nature tag is a playful way to learn a lot about identifying trees and tree taxonomy. It is a guided activity that synthesizes the free-flowing kind of activity and learning that naturally happens in forests with the prescribed activity of the factory keeping the benefits of both without the cost of treating our children like machines. The Nature Tag - Make Me One with Everything field trip expands on the tree tag version of nature tag and all the other posts in this blog include guided activities that similarly synthesize the free-flowing and prescribed patterns found in forests and factories.