Hands on learning is our favorite! This time of the year is perfect for fun Fir Tree Learn & Discover! Use this easy unit to help your child learn more about fir trees.
Last year we explored fun Christmas traditions with great ways to help teach those traditions to your children this Christmas season.
This Christmas season has been a little off with all our traveling and moving, but we still managed to get in some fun, hands on learning about the beautiful fir trees lining the parking lots and roads in Christmas tree lots.
Fir Tree Learn Books
Ancient Ones is a beautiful book! The pictures are very inviting and the information about the Douglas Fir is concise, but informational. The reader follows the life of the fir tree from a sprout to decomposition. Well worth the read.
Gorgeous book with the classic tale from Hans Christian Anderson. The Fir Tree is illustrated with beautifully inviting clothbound illustrations. Must read for the Christmas season.
Fir Tree Discover
Although our small home living didn’t lend itself well to a full size fir tree this year, we did stop by the local Christmas tree lot and picked up a couple branches of douglas fir branches. We used these for our fun fir tree learn & discover.
If you would like to use a printable for your senses discover you can use a great printable from Gift of Curiosity.
Setup for this activity is very easy. Just clip off a couple ends of the fir tree branches and add them to a tray.
I talked with the kids about smelling, touching, seeing, and hearing the fir trees. We decided to leave taste out of this discovery.
Smelling is pretty easy. As soon as you cut the branches the fragrance is unmistakeable.
Touching the end your child will feel the prickly feel.
The kids noticed the beautiful, rich green color of the fir limbs.
We used the branches like drum sticks to hear how the branches felt while tapping.
Fir Tree Art
After exploring our fir tree pieces, we pulled out some paint for fun resist art. I would note that you may want to use tape that does not stick as well. Ours kind of stuck to the paper! Although the process was the same, the end product could have been a little better.
Notice with your child the beautiful stroke fir tree branches make and how the branches need do not soak up quite as much paint as a paint brush.
Fir Tree Learn Links
There are so many great posts out there to extend your fir tree learn & discover activities, but these are some of our favorites.
One of our admins blogs at Study at Home Mama and has a very easy DIY Charlie Brown Christmas Tree project. There is still time to put this together this Christmas season!
On Christian Montessori Network we have our Montessori Space for Christmas and Christmas Montessori-Inspired Tot Trays for you to explore. No doubt there is plenty of wonderful Christmas inspiration in these two posts!
The Preschool Toolbox Blog has a really wonderful post to help your preschooler with the Life Cycle of a Christmas Tree.
Have a very, Merry Christmas and enjoy your Fir Tree Learn & Discover!
There are so many wonderful ideas for learning about fir trees! 🙂 The book, “Ancient Ones” looks really beautiful.