Trees!
Welcome back to HMSC Connects! Families , our electronic newsletter connecting families to museum resources for playing and learning at home. This week we’re exploring trees. Discover how trees in your neighborhood are changing with the season, examine a birchbark canoe, and hear a traditional Seneca tale about forest animals.

Now that we have three weeks of enews out, we want to know how useful this is to you. Please give us your feedback about what went well and what else you would want to see.

What We’re Doing This Week
By Wendy Derjue-Holzer, HMNH Education Director and parent to N, age 9
Usually when N and I take walks around our neighborhood (masked, of course), we look at flowers blooming in our neighbors’ yards. Today, we looked at the flowers budding on our street’s trees. We found several different varieties of trees with flowers blooming. N picked one flower from a tree she liked and we carried it around on the rest of our walk. Matching that flower became the perfect way to look closer at the trees on our street. We discovered that the tree in front of our house is one of six growing on our block. It was by far the most popular tree type on our street. Our neighbor had a tree with similar but clearly different flowers. Another tree had green things that may or may not have been “flowers." It certainly gave us a new way to appreciate the nature around us.

Storytime

Join Harvard Museums of Science and Culture Volunteer Coordinator Carol Carlson for a virtual storytime! This week’s story is Turtle’s Race with Beaver as told by Joseph Bruchac and James Bruchac, illustrated by Ariane Dewey and Jose Aruego (Dial Books for Young Readers, a Division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 2003).
Try This!

Can You Canoe? 

Have you ever floated in a canoe? It may have been made of fiberglass or aluminum. This birchbark canoe was purchased from a Penobscot man, Francis Sebattis, in 1912 in Old Town, Maine and given to the museum. A birchbark canoe is actually made with the parts of several different trees. Can you point to the skin of the boat? It is made of bark peeled in long sheets from several paper birch trees which are mostly white. The inside of the bark which is light brown, touches the water and the whiter outside part is the inside of the boat. 

Can you find four examples of trees that are not birch used on this boat? Look closely for changes in color and texture.

© President and Fellows of Harvard College, Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology, PM 29-33-10/98432
  • Did you find the seat? It is woven with cedar tree bark. The ribs of the boat are made with cedar wood.
  • Did you notice the zig zag stitch at the front? The birch bark is tied to the frame of the boat with long red-spruce tree roots.
  • All those wood bars holding each side apart, called thwarts, are made of maple.
  • The black lines are made with pine-tree sap which is boiled into a glue and painted on to seal stitching holes joining pieces of bark together.

Look for fallen birch-bark branches on the ground near trees. Please don’t peel bark off a living tree or it may die. Here are some clues to help you identify a birch tree.

Hug a Tree
Just like people, each tree is unique. Play this game with a partner to find out what makes a tree special. This game is best played in a spot with at least three trees and flat ground. Try it on a hike!

For this game, you’ll need a partner and a blindfold.

  • First, ask your partner to cover their eyes with the blindfold.
  • Once they’re blindfolded, spin your partner around a few times, so they don’t know which way they are facing. Wait until your partner isn’t dizzy anymore.
  • Lead your partner carefully to a tree.
  • Have your partner hug the tree! Tell them to feel the tree all over. What do they notice that is special about the tree?
  • Lead your partner carefully away from the tree.
  • Spin them around again so they don’t know which way they came from.
  • Ask your partner to take off the blindfold.
  • Now, challenge your partner to find their tree! 

Switch places with your partner! Now it’s your turn to hug a tree! Send us a picture of your tree at hmscpr@hmsc.harvard.edu.
Further Exploration:

What helped you figure out which tree was yours? Did it have branches or roots in special places? Was it a certain size in your arms? Did its bark feel rough or smooth? Now use your eyes to investigate further. Look at the color of the bark and the size and shape of the leaves. What else makes your tree special? If you want to know what kind of tree you are looking at, try using the Leafsnap app to identify it.
Something Extra  

Looking for more resources for identifying trees? Check out this field guide to common Boston-area trees from the Harvard Forest.

And this interactive field guide from the Arbor Day Foundation.

Many of the trees in Harvard Yard were planted in the early 1990s as part of a project to restore the Yard’s canopy.  See how 25 years of tree growth has changed the campus!
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