This blog is not only for adults, but also for children! This week I had a little help from my Kindergarten students. Washington is known as the Evergreen State and we noticed that we have a lot of evergreens around our playground. We picked the largest tree that was full of pinecones for us to learn more about. We picked up some of the pinecones on the ground after looking at the needles very closely. Back in our classroom we looked in a tree identification book to see if we could find our tree. We discovered our tree and a great picture of its pinecones in the National Audubon Society first field guide: Trees. The tree is a Douglas Fir and with very interesting pinecones it was not difficult for my students to find. We read about the Douglas Fir and discovered that they grow close together as we saw by our playground. Also, it is one of the largest trees on the west coast.

My students really enjoyed being a part of this blog and now they have learned how to find out more about the nature around them!