Pond Study: Ash Tree Study {Week 3}

This post journals the third week of our one year pond study in which we begin our study on the Ash tree.  We will be keeping an eye on this tree for the whole 12 months, so do check back.

Catch Up! If you’ve missed any of my pond posts, you can find them at the following links: Beginning Our Pond Study; Assessing the Pond and Checking Out the Pond Pollution

My mum once again accompanied us to the pond, a fact I was very grateful for as our Ash tree study was unlikely to hold our little ones’ attention.   

Our Goals This Week

This week we would be focusing on an Ash tree study.  We are planning on following the progress of this tree all the way through the twelve months of the year.

Here were our goals:

• Take a photo of the tree
• Do a bark rubbing for our nature journal
• Measure the circumference and height of the tree and make a note of them at the back of our journal
• Identify any plant in symbiosis with the tree
• Attempt to identify the tree

Photos of the Village Pond

Before we focused on the tree, I took some photos of the wildlife we saw last Monday:

Ash Tree Study

This week we weren’t there for the wildlife alone.  A tree was called our names…unfortunately we did not have a clue what it was called so we couldn’t call its name back! Here is the tree we chose:

Bark Rubbing

I still didn’t have the foggiest clue.  We began with a bark rubbing:

Circumference

Next up was measuring the circumference, which T11 did using a piece of string.  Our plan is to remeasure at the end of the year and see if it has changed much.  I had also researched how to work out the height of the tree using this website

I’m thinking the people of our village were wondering exactly what was going on!

Plant Life Growing on the Tree

Next we looked at the plant life growing on the tree and we found lichen and Ivy:

It was interesting that the children straight away said that the presence of lichen meant that the air quality was good and pollution was low.  Thank you Apologia Plant Biology!  I kinda wished we’d noticed last week when we were studying pollution!  When we come back to pollution we will take a look at the Lichen underneath the microscope

And finally I wanted us to try to figure out exactly what tree we were studying.  The bark rubbings were a start and I also asked the children to scout around and pick up any leaves which had fallen under the tree.  These were the three types we collected:

Buds on the Tree

Whilst doing some research I had happened upon this website which had a lovely downloadable key to identifying trees in the winter by their buds.  Oh, was I happy!  Help at last!  So back we went to the tree, with Gary in tow.  Gary works in the horticultural industry so was immediately able to identify it (irritating, no?)  but I was thankful he kept it to himself until the children had tried by themselves using the id guide:

Black buds which belong to an………Ash tree!  So there you have it.  This year our tree study will be all about the Ash by the pond side!  Next week we will be concentrating on the fauna and flora of the pond area, and I’m really looking forward to it.

I am taking a blogging break until the Tuesday after Easter, apart from posting next weeks pond study, when I will reveal our very first journal page, on Thursday.  I hope everyone has a wonderful Easter break.