Benefits of Trees and How to ID Them (Part 1 of 2)

Welcome to Change is Simple’s Online Learning Platform!

Overview: Today we are going to be taking a look at the largest living things on earth…..TREES!! Trees provide us with so much and are a very important piece to our environment. Over the next few days, we are going to take a closer look at some different types of trees and how to identify them in a few different ways. These activities are for all ages.

Grade Level: K-6

Theme: Natural Systems, Natural Resources

Supervision needed? No

Essential Questions: 

• Why are trees so important?

• What is the scientific process that trees go through to create oxygen?

Materials Needed:

• Pencil

• Paper

• Camera

Standards:

Check out the video below to learn about why trees are so important and one way to identify trees……there will be some questions to answer from the video, so pay attention!

Why are trees important?

Hopefully, you were paying attention to the video, let’s see if you can answer these questions:

1. Write 2-3 sentences on why trees’ roots are so important.

2. What gas do trees take in and what gas do they provide us? What is that scientific process called?

3. Explain how trees can help you save energy at home.

4. Write 4-5 sentences on how the trees around where you live are helping your environment and you. (ex: shading your house, providing a home for animals, helping the soil around your home)

Activity: Now let’s get to know some trees!

1. Head outside and try to find 5 different trees to identify, bring a piece of paper and something to write with

2. Take some notes on the tree bark that you are identifying, be looking at the Texture, Color, and Pattern. Look below to see some examples.

3. With the notes that you took, use the Bark ID guides below to help you identify the trees

   • If you are located outside of the northeast, just search Bark ID guide for your area to help you out.

4. Take pictures of the unique bark patterns you find and send them in!

5. Research to see if those trees are native to your area?

   • Native trees help local ecosystems and are much more beneficial to your local ecosystem than invasive trees

   • Invasive Species: These are species that are not from the area and has spread because many do not have predators in the new area. Invasive species usually are harmful to ecosystem that they don’t belong in.
     
     

What to look for when Identifying a tree by its bark:

• Texture- Smooth, rough, shaggy

• Color- White, brown, multi-colored

• Patterns- ridges: deep, shallow, horizontal, vertical; scaled, spotted, plain

American Beech

White Pine

Cedar

Sycamore

White Birch

Norway Maple

Tree ID Guides:

Tree Math!!

1. If every minute about 36 football fields worth of trees are cut down, how many football fields worth of trees would be cut down in 8 minutes?

2. A tree grows about 2 feet a year. How long would it take to grow your height?

3. One tree can make 8,300 sheets of paper. The average person uses about 7 trees worth of paper in one year. How many sheets of paper would the average person use in one year?

4. Recycling 1 ton of paper can save 17 trees. Your school uses 6 tons of paper a year, if you recycle half of that paper, how many trees can you save?
   
   
   
   

Did you enjoy today’s activity? Stay tuned Friday we will be talking about another way to identify trees and in the meantime…

Send us a photo of yourself doing today's activity and if you would like, please share your name(s) and where you are from with cisonline@changeissimple.org!

Water Conservation

Welcome to Change is Simple’s Online Learning Platform!

Overview: In this lesson, students will learn about water as an extremely limited natural resource. Water is used in many aspects of life every day, but there is only a small amount of clean, available freshwater for human use- and this is reduced every day! In this activity you will learn where our supply of global water is, and how we can conserve water as a resource for human use. 

Grade Level: 1-4. For 5+, click here. For adults, click here and here

Theme: Water availability, natural resource use

Supervision needed? No

Essential Questions:

• Is water a limited or unlimited resource?

  Where is our water stored globally?

Materials Needed:

• One Sheet of Paper

• Measuring Cup

• Computer

Standards:

• 13.1 Describe types of natural resources and their connection with health.

• Ecological Health 13.2 Describe how business, industry, and individuals can work cooperatively to solve ecological health problems, such as conserving natural resources and decreasing pollution

• Ecological Health 13.4 Identify individual and community responsibility in ecological health.

• Ecological Health 14.2 Identify ways the physical environment is related to individual and community health

• 14.3 List practices and products that make living safer.

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Let’s start by watching this introduction video!

Student-led Experiment    

Activity Duration: 15 Minutes

Materials Needed:

1. sheet of paper

2. measuring cup & two water glasses

3. computer

step 1: water availability

Please watch this video below and then move onto Step 2!

step 2: water usage activity

From this video we are able to see that water is an incredibly limited resource! Is water really that important? In today’s activity we are going to look at some ways we use water and how much water we can save if we change our habits!

Question 1: Let’s brainstorm 10 things we NEED water for! 

1. ____________________

2. ____________________

3. ____________________

4. ____________________

5. ____________________

6. ____________________

7. ____________________

8. ____________________

9. ____________________

10. ____________________

Now let’s see how much water we typically use, and how much we could save if we change some simple habits and fixtures. For this activity you will need: 

1. sheet of paper

2. two equal sized water glasses

3. a measuring cup

Brushing our Teeth: 

We all should be brushing our teeth twice a day for 2 minutes at a time. Fill the cup on the left with 2 cups of water (fill the cup as full as possible - if it doesn't hold 2 cups, that is okay). Then fill the cup on the right with ¼ cup of water.

These cups represent that you can use 88% less water if you shut the faucet off when brushing your teeth. You only need to turn it on when you are rinsing! Later we will calculate how many gallons you would save!

Showering:

If one person showers once a day for 10 minutes, you can use up to 40 gallons of water! Fill the cup on the left with 2 cups of water (fill the cup as full as possible - if it doesn't hold 2 cups, that is okay). Then fill the cup on the right with 1 cup of water.

These two cups represent how you can use 50% less water if you take a 5 minute shower instead of a 10 minute shower! 

If you change your shower head to a low flow shower head, you can use 50% less than above by cutting your flow in half! Take the cup on the right and remove ½ cup of water. Later we will calculate how many gallons you would save!

Hand-Washing Dishes: 

If we hand wash our dishes for 10 minutes while leaving the faucet running, we could use up to 40 gallons of water! Fill the cup on the left with 2 cups of water (fill the cup as full as possible - if it doesn't hold 2 cups, that is okay). Then fill the cup on the right with ¼ cup of water.

These two cups represent how you can use 88% less water if you shut the faucet off when washing the dishes. You would only need to turn it on when you are rinsing or filling the sink with soapy water. Next we will calculate how many gallons you would save!

Step 3: Water Worksheet

Based on the three things we just learned, let’s find out how much water we could save by applying the above changes to our lives! Calculate the difference between the Traditional Usage and the Conservative Usage using the table below.

Want more of a challenge and to learn more? Click below to calculate your home water usage!

Step 4: Let’s Reflect

Question 1: What percent of the water on Earth is available for humans to use? (Hint: think back to the first video on water availability)

Question 2: What are 5 ways that you can save water in your house? 

1. ____________________

2. ____________________

3. ____________________

4. ____________________

5. ____________________

Question 3: Why is it important to save water? 

Step 5: Additional Resources

Parents! Check These Out!

Did you enjoy today’s activity? Stay tuned for more, and in the meantime…

Send us a photo of yourself doing today's activity and if you would like, please share your name(s) and where you are from with cisonline@changeissimple.org

Watersheds

Welcome to Change is Simple’s Online Learning Platform!

Overview: In this activity, students will create a watershed using a piece of paper and coloring materials. Students will follow along to an instructors direction to learn what is a watershed, and what you may find in one. After creating the watershed, students will conduct an experiment to understand where water travels through a watershed after a rainstorm. This lesson will highlight how water brings pollution from roads, construction zones, farms and residential areas into our lakes, streams, and oceans. 

Theme: Water pollution, natural resources

Grade Level: 2-5

Supervision needed? No

Essential Questions:

• What is a watershed?

• How does pollution travel though and enter a watershed?

• How does pollution impact a watershed?

Materials Needed:

• Paper

• Coloring utensils

• Spray bottle with water

Standards

• 3-LS4-4. Make a claim about the merit of a solution to a problem caused when the environment changes and the types of plants and animals that live there may change.

• 2-ESS2-1. Compare multiple solutions designed to slow or prevent wind or water from changing the shape of the land.*

• K-2-ETS1-2. Develop a simple sketch, drawing, or physical model to illustrate how the shape of an object helps it function as needed to solve a given problem.

Background:

What is a watershed?

A watershed is an area or ridge of land that separates the flow of water to different rivers, streams, and lakes. All of the water that falls over a watershed will flow to the same basins (lakes and ponds). When rain falls, or snow melts, that water travels downhill over dirt, roads, and farms carrying whatever it comes in contact with. That means that the water collects and carries pollution to nearby lakes and oceans!

What is pollution?

Pollution is any substance or item that is harmful to the environment it is in. Water pollution takes many different shapes. If rainfall or snowmelt travels over a farm, it can collect fertilizers from the soil and carry them to lakes and oceans. This fertilizer can harm aquatic life. Similarly, oil from cars on the road can harm aquatic life if it gets carried to oceans, lakes. etc.

student led experiment

Activity Duration: 15 Minutes

Materials Needed:

1. One sheet white paper

2. Assorted Markers

3. Spray bottle with water

Step 1: Set up experiment.

Crumple up a sheet of white paper with both hands, and then lay out and semi-flatten.

Color the ridges of your watershed in purple.

To create the towns in your watershed, draw three small towns (red) at three places in the valleys of your watershed. (A valley is a low point of land between mountains).

Next, draw a large city (orange) close to one of the towns. The towns and city are locations in our watershed where we often find large amounts of oil on roads from cars, and pollution from people.

Next, draw four farms (green) in different flat places throughout the watershed. Most farmers use fertilizers to help their crops (fruits and vegetables) grow! These fertilizers are helpful for the farms, but harmful if they end up in our waterways, causing a dangerous process called eutrophication. To learn more about eutrophication, click here!

Finally, draw a coal mine (black) near one of the cities. Coal is a major fossil fuel. The process of mining coal from the earth usually contaminates nearby waters with highly acidic water and metals. To learn more about the process of coal mining , click here!

Step 2: Create your hypothesis.

Soon, you are going to take your spray bottle or pipet and create rainfall over your watershed. Before you do this, you must make a hypothesis as to what will happen when you conduct this experiment!

Question 1: Where will the precipitation end up after the storm ends?

Question 2: What will happen to the pollution that comes from the coal mine, farms, and cities/roads?

Step 4: Create a rainstorm over your watershed!

Take your spray bottle and start to spray water on all areas of your watershed. Carefully observe the changes that occur. Be creative! You can make certain areas heavy rainfall areas and others lighter areas to observe the differences. Record your observations on a sheet of paper (pictures or words!)

Step 5: Reflection

1. Was your hypothesis (guess) from step 3 accurate?

2. What happened to the bodies of water after a serious rainstorm occurred over the cities and farms?

3. How could this runoff impact our watershed?

Now that you have completed this experiment, you hopefully understand that when it rains, pollution travels from our major towns and cities, farms, and industrial areas into our rivers, lakes, streams, and oceans. This can harm animals that live in the water and prevent humans from having clean drinking water. Let’s brainstorm some ways that we can help protect our watersheds from pollution!

The Change is Simple team has come up with three ways to help you get started:

Ride your bike or walk instead of riding in a car! The less we drive, the less oil ends up on our roads.

Pick up trash, even if it’s not yours! The best place for trash is in your trash bin, NOT outside where it can blow into our waterways!

Support local farmers that use little or no fertilizers! The less fertilizers used, the less that ends up in our oceans.

Stay tuned for more activities! In the meantime, send us a photo of yourself doing today's activity and if you would like to share your name(s), and where you are from to cisonline@changeissimple.org